Xanthomelas bakeri Chapin

Xanthomelas bakeri Chapin, 1929: 1 (Madang, Territory of New Guinea).

Now Sericulus bakeri (Chapin, 1929) . See Mayr, 1941: 184; Mayr and Jennings, 1952: 7–8; Gilliard and LeCroy, 1967: 74–75; Gilliard, 1969: 330– 335, pl. 13; Coates, 1990: 402–403; and Frith and Frith, 2004: 343–344; 2009a: 399–400.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 268253, adult male, collected at ‘‘ Madang, Territory of New Guinea,’’ now known to be from the Adelbert Mountains, 04.54S, 145.24E (Frith and Beehler, 1998: 566), Madang Province, Papua New Guinea, on 29 August 1928, by Rollo H. Beck (no. 84).

COMMENTS: In the original description, Chapin cited the AMNH number of the holotype and listed the two additional specimens that Beck collected. The two paratypes, both labeled as from ‘‘Madang’’ are: AMNH 268254 (Beck’s no. 134), immature male, 3 September 1928; AMNH 268255 (184), male, 10 September 1928. This last specimen had been exchanged to the Rothschild Collection, and when that collection came to AMNH, it was inadvertently renumbered as AMNH 679305 .

After Rollo Beck left the American Museum’s Whitney South Sea Expedition, Museum Trustee George F. Baker, Jr., supported him on a collecting trip into what was at that time the Mandated Territory of New Guinea. He collected in the vicinity of Madang and on the Huon Peninsula, and his most important discovery was this new species of bowerbird. However, the exact collecting locality was not known, and additional specimens were not found until 1959, when E. Thomas Gilliard and his wife, Margaret, made a collection in the Memenga Forest, Adelbert Mountains, to the northwest of Madang (See Gilliard and LeCroy, 1967: 74– 75, and Gilliard, 1969: 330–335). The bower was first reported by Mackay (1989: 62–64) and Coates (1990: 403).

See cover for painting of this species by William T. Cooper.