Passer hispaniolensis maltae Hartert

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 : 8

Passer hispaniolensis maltae Hartert

Passer hispaniolensis maltae Hartert, 1902a: 332 ( Malta) .

Now considered a hybrid between Passer italiae ( Vieillot, 1817) and P. hispaniolensis hispaniolensis (Temminck, 1820) . See Hartert, 1919: 159; Meise, 1936: 666–667; Vaurie, 1956: 1–7; 1959: 569; Summers-Smith, 1988: 163; Dickinson, 2003: 716; and Summers-Smith, 2009: 794–795.

LECTOTYPE: AMNH 719010 , adult male, collected on Malta Island, in May 1861, by Charles Wright (No. 4). From the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: Hartert did not designate a holotype in the original description; by listing Wright’s specimen No. 4 as the type, Hartert (1919: 159) later designated it the lectotype of Passer hispaniolensis maltae . Hartert (1902a: 332) based his description on 34 adult males, 32 of which came to AMNH with the Rothschild Collection. The 31 paralectotypes in AMNH are: AMNH 718979–718982, 718985–718993, 718996–719009, and 719011– 719014. Six of these bear Jardine labels and five of them have Jardine sale numbers in red on the reverse of the label; these probably came to Rothschild from Edward Bartlett (see Hartert, 1919: 159). The remainder came directly to Rothschild from the collectors Wright and Adams, who were collecting on Malta in 1860–1861.

The relationship of the Malta specimens to P. domesticus , P. italiae , and P. hispaniolensis , and of these species to each other, has been much discussed in the literature. The most recent treatment ( Summers-Smith, 2009: 794– 795) considered the three to be separate species and maltae a hybrid population between P. italiae and P. h. hispaniolensis .