Pachycephala robusta borroloola Mathews

Pachycephalidae, Aegithalidae, Remizidae, Paridae, Sittidae, Neosittidae, Certhiidae, Rhabdornithidae, Climacteridae, Dicaeidae, Pardalotidae, Nectariniidae, And & Lecroy, Mary, 2010, Type Specimens Of Birds In The American Museum Of Natural History Part 8. Passeriformes:, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2010 (333), pp. 1-178 : 27

Pachycephala robusta borroloola Mathews

Pachycephala robusta borroloola Mathews, 1918a: 137 (McArthur River, Eastern Northern Territory to Normanton).

Now Pachycephala melanura robusta Masters, 1876 . See Schodde and Mason, 1999: 445–446, Boles, 2007: 427, and Jønsson et al., 2008.

LECTOTYPE: AMNH 657894 , adult male, collected at Borroloola , 16.00S, 136.15E (Times Atlas), lower McArthur River, Northern Territory, Australia, on 23 June 1913, by Harry G. Barnard (no. 78) for Henry L. White. From the Mathews Collection via the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: Mathews did not designate a type in the original description or say how many specimens he examined, but he described only the male. AMNH 657894 bears in addition to the H.L. White label and a Rothschild Collection label printed ‘‘Ex. coll. G.M. Mathews,’’ a ‘‘Figured’’ label, indicating that it was illustrated in Mathews (1920, pl. 462, opp. p. 224, text p. 225). There he noted that the figured male, collected at Borroloola on 23 June 1913, was the type of borroloola, thereby designating it the lectotype. It had not previously been included in the AMNH type collection.

The female, AMNH 657895, bearing the same data and a ‘‘Figured’’ label, was pictured with the above male, but no type status for it was indicated in Mathews’ text. It is a paralectotype of borroloola. Neither of these specimens was entered in Mathews’ catalog.

Mayr (1967: 24) considered borroloola a synonym of P. pectoralis violetae ; see Schodde and Mason (1999: 445–446) for a discussion of species and subspecies limits.