Passer griseus abyssinicus Neumann

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 : 9-10

Passer griseus abyssinicus Neumann

Passer griseus abyssinicus Neumann, 1908b: 70 (Ghadi-Saati, Mareb River, Erythrea) .

Now Passer swainsonii (Rüppell, 1840) . See Hartert, 1928: 198; Dickinson, 2003: 717; Fry

and Keith, 2004: 4–5; Ash and Atkins, 2009: 332; and Summers-Smith, 2009: 803.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 719865 , adult male, collected at Ghadi-Saati , 4675 ft, Mareb River, 15.10N, 38.50E ( Ash and Atkins, 2009), Eritrea, on 10 February 1903, by G. Schrader. From the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: In the original description, Neumann designated as type the only specimen in the Rothschild Collection collected by Schrader on 10 February 1903. He gave the range as ‘‘ Abyssinia and the Galla country southwards to Lake Rudolf,’’ but it is unclear which specimens he included in abyssinicus as he did not mark specimens with that name. I have considered paratypes of abyssinicus to be only the specimens additional to the holotype collected by Schrader at Ghadi-Saati in 1903. Paratypes: AMNH 719866 , male, 4 February; AMNH 719867 , female, 1 February ; AMNH 719868 , male, 8 February .

While Neumann in his original description had labeled abyssinicus a nomen novum, he did not consider it a replacement name. Having compared his specimens with specimens of Rüppell’s Passer swainsonii , he considered his gray-throated bird from the Abyssinian highlands different and in need of a name. Moreau and Greenway (1962: 17) considered abyssinicus a synonym of swainsonii .

Among recent authors Dickinson (2003: 717) and Ash and Atkins (2009: 332) have retained swainsonii as a subspecies of Passer griseus , and Fry and Keith (2004: 4–5) and Summers-Smith (2009: 803) have considered it a full species.