Falcunculus frontatus herbertoni Mathews

Pachycephalidae, Aegithalidae, Remizidae, Paridae, Sittidae, Neosittidae, Certhiidae, Rhabdornithidae, Climacteridae, Dicaeidae, Pardalotidae, Nectariniidae, And & Lecroy, Mary, 2010, Type Specimens Of Birds In The American Museum Of Natural History Part 8. Passeriformes:, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2010 (333), pp. 1-178 : 5

Falcunculus frontatus herbertoni Mathews

Falcunculus frontatus herbertoni Mathews, 1912a (January) : 376 (Herberton, Queensland).

Now Falcunculus frontatus (Latham, 1801) . See Mayr, 1953, Schodde and Mason, 1999: 466– 467, and Boles, 2007: 409.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 657258 , male on original label [5 female plumage], collected at Herberton , 17.23S, 145.23E ( Storr, 1984: 183), Queensland, Australia, on 6 November 1910. From the Mathews Collection (no. 9011) via the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: Mathews cited his catalog number in the original description, sex not indicated, and gave the range as northern Queensland. According to his catalog, this specimen was obtained from [F.P.] Dodd (1911). In addition to an original label, and Mathews and Rothschild type labels, it also bears a ‘‘Figured’’ label, indicating that it was illustrated in Mathews (1923b, pl. 491, lower right fig., opp. p. 2, text p. 4), where it was described as an adult female although not said to be the type. The only additional Mathews specimen from northern Queensland is AMNH 657261, collected at Cairns in January 1885 by T.H. Bowyer Bower but not cataloged by Mathews until May 1913 (catalog no. 16853), shortly after he received the specimens from Bowyer Bower’s mother. It is not a paratype.

Schodde and Mason (1999: 466–467) considered F. frontatus a monotypic species within a superspecies; Christidis and Boles (2008: 194–195) retained F. frontatus as a polytypic species and noted that molecular analysis was needed.