Paradisea apoda subintermedia Rothschild

Lecroy, Mary, 2014, Type Specimens Of Birds In The American Museum Of Natural History Part 12. Passeriformes: Ploceidae, Sturnidae, Buphagidae, Oriolidae, Dicruridae, Callaeidae, Grallinidae, Corcoracidae, Artamidae, Cracticidae, Ptilonorhynchidae, Cnemophilidae, Paradisaeidae, And Corvidae, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2014 (393), pp. 1-165 : 109

Paradisea apoda subintermedia Rothschild

Paradisea apoda subintermedia Rothschild, 1921c: 138 (probably inland of Traitors’ and Hercules bays).

Now considered an intergrade between P. raggiana augustaevictoriae and P. r. intermedia . See Hartert, 1928: 190; Mayr, 1962d: 200; Gilliard, 1969: 222–229; Coates, 1990: 508–516; Frith and Beehler, 1998: 456–469; and Frith and Frith, 2009b: 488.

LECTOTYPE: AMNH 678862 , [adult male], trade skin smuggled into England in 1921, no indication of collecting locality. From the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: When Rothschild described this form he did not designate a type, but said that he had nine males and thought that they came from inland of Huon Gulf. Only seven of these specimens came to AMNH, and Hartert (1928: 190) had tied the Rothschild type label on the specimen that became AMNH 678862 without otherwise distinguishing it from other trade skins obtained by Rothschild at the same time. This number was cited by Frith and Beehler (1998: 459), and perhaps others, as the type, not realizing that it had not been so designated. I hereby designate AMNH 678862 the lectotype of P. a. subintermedia in order to validate the specimen that has always been considered the type. The six paralectotypes in AMNH are: AMNH 678857–678861, 678863.

Both P. a. granti and P. a. subintermedia are based on trade skins without exact locality, but they seem to have come from around Huon Gulf. Most authors agree that these two forms comprise a population intergrading between P. raggiana augustaevictoriae and P. r. intermedia ; of the two names, granti is the older.