Parotia wahnesi Rothschild

Parotia wahnesi Rothschild (in Foerster and Rothschild), 1906: 2 (mountains of German New Guinea).

Now Parotia wahnesi Rothschild, 1906 . See Hartert, 1919: 128; Mayr, 1931c: 649; 1962d: 196; Gilliard, 1969: 170–172; Diamond, 1985: 79–80; Coates, 1990: 469–471; Cracraft, 1992: 29; Frith and Beehler, 1998: 292–297; and Frith and Frith, 2009b: 471–472.

LECTOTYPE: AMNH 678233, adult male, collected in the Rawlinson Mountains, 06.32S, 147.17E (Frith and Beehler, 1998: 570), Huon Peninsula, Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea (formerly German New Guinea), in December 1905 – January 1906, by Carl Wahnes. From the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: The description of this species was printed in a three-page separate publication, for a copy of which I am most grateful to Clifford Frith. No type was designated in the original description, in which both male and female were described. A much-shortened description was published by Rothschild (1906: 7–8) and further notes on the species and a plate were published by Rothschild (1911: 356, pl. VI), but by that time he had additional, but undated, males. Hartert (1919: 128) listed as the type a ‘‘fere ad.’’ male, collected in the Rawlinson Mountains in December 1905 – January 1906, thereby designating as the lectotype AMNH 678233, a male molting into adult plumage but in which a few of the primaries and secondaries retain the brown of immaturity; it bears a Rothschild type label. The paralectotypes in AMNH are two females collected at the same time and place by Wahnes, AMNH 678234 and 678235.