Artamus gracilis Ingram

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 : 63-64

Artamus gracilis Ingram

Artamus gracilis Ingram, 1906: 115 (Alexandria) .

Now Artamus personatus (Gould, 1841) . See Mathews, 1912a: 367; Hartert, 1920: 455; Mathews, 1923b: 226–234; 1930: 636; Mayr, 1962b: 163; Storr, 1977: 100; Schodde and Mason, 1999: 563; Dickinson, 2003: 464; and Rowley and Russell, 2009b: 306.

SYNTYPES: AMNH 665126, AMNH 665127, unsexed by collector, collected at Alexandria, 19.00S, 136.42E (Times Atlas), Northern Territory, Australia, undated, by Wilfred Stalker. From the Mathews Collec-

tion (nos. 2435, 2436) via the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: In the original description, no type was designated nor was the number of specimens examined or their sex given. One set of measurements was included. Later, Ingram (1907, 1909) made it clear that Stalker had shipped his specimens from Alexandria in three shipments. Only those specimens that had come in Stalker’s first shipment were included in the descriptions published by Ingram in 1906 ( Ingram, 1907: 409). There were no additional specimens of Artamus gracilis in the third shipment, which Ingram (1909) reported on separately.

Stalker collected a total of four specimens of this form at Alexandria. Only the specimens Ingram (1907: 409) labeled ‘‘ a ’’ and ‘‘ b,’’ without sex, date, or collector’s number, were the ones he had included in his description of gracilis . The two specimens bearing Stalker’s no. 108 are a male and a female published as ‘‘ c ’’ and ‘‘ d ’’ by Ingram (1907: 409). He stated: ‘‘An adult male marked c more nearly approaches the typical Artamus personatus than the specimens sent with the first part of the collection, from which I described A. gracilis .’’ The male and female specimens with Stalker’s no. 108 have both been marked ‘‘2nd Coll.’’ in a hand I don’t recognize, but unfortunately the male is marked ‘‘D’’ and the female ‘‘C.’’ Even more unfortunately, Hartert filled in and attached the Rothschild type label to this male. Apparently, Mathews had sent the adult male specimen, mentioned by Ingram (1907: 409) as closest to personatus and incorrectly marked ‘‘D,’’ as the type of gracilis . Its Rothschild type label is unquestionably attached to the wrong specimen.

By the time of Ingram’s 1909 paper, the entire collection from Alexandria had been purchased by Mathews, except for the types of forms named by Ingram in 1906. Apparently, under agreement with Ingram, Mathews exchanged the types of Ingram’s new forms to Rothschild without entering them in his catalog. This exchange is documented in Rothschild’s partial list of exchanges in the Archives of the AMNH Department of Ornithology and was entered as received from Mathews on 10 July 1909. The types of these names were published on by Hartert (1920: 455), long before he began separately publishing on Mathews’ types ( Hartert, 1929a, 1931a, 1931b).

There are three Alexandria specimens cataloged as personatus by Mathews: the female collected on 16 Jan 1906 (Mathews no. 2437) and two without sex and date (Mathews nos. 2435, 2436). These last two Mathews cataloged as ‘‘ ♀,’’ and added ‘‘ ♀ ’’ in pencil to Stalker’s small tags, themselves otherwise written in ink. The number ‘‘627’’ written in pencil on the labels of all four of the Alexandria specimens refers to the number of that species in Mathews’ (1908) ‘‘Handlist.’’

AMNH 665126 and AMNH 665127, the two specimens without a collector’s number and unsexed until ‘‘ ♀ ’’ was added by Mathews, are the two specimens noted by Ingram (1907: 409) as ‘‘ a ’’ and ‘‘ b,’’ and were the two specimens included in Stalker’s first shipment. They are therefore the syntypes of Artamus gracilis . AMNH type labels have been added and they have been included in the AMNH type collection. The small collector’s tag on AMNH 665127 had been marked ‘‘TYPE’’ in what appears to be Mathews’ hand, but such annotation on a label conveys no nomenclatural validity (ICZN, 1999: 77, Art. 72.4.7). AMNH 665124, the male bearing the Rothschild type label is retained in the type collection, with an added label indicating that it is not a type.