Gilbertornis rufogularis zanda 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 : 13

Gilbertornis rufogularis zanda Mathews

Gilbertornis rufogularis zanda Mathews, 1916a: 59 (Victoria) .

Now Pachycephala rufogularis Gould, 1841 . See Mayr, 1967: 11, Schodde and Mason, 1999: 436, and Boles, 2007: 412.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 659345 , adult male, collected at Bolton’s Crab-hole , Victoria, Australia, on 14 September 1913, by Thomas H. Tregellas. From the Mathews Collection (no. 18294) via the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: In the original description, Mathews said that the type of zanda was from Victoria, collected on 14 September 1913, and was paler above and lacked the gray breast band of the nominate race. There are two specimens collected at the same place on this date. The second specimen, AMNH 659346, also a male, bears a Mathews ‘‘Figured’’ label, indicating that it is the specimen illustrated in Mathews (1920, pl. 395, opp. p. 246, text p. 246). The specimen there described and figured was not said to be the type after Mathews’ usual practice, so by default AMNH 659345 is the holotype. It bears Tregellas’ label, Rothschild Collection and type labels, and a Mathews label with his catalog no. 18294, marked ‘‘Type’’ in Mathews’ hand. However, this specimen has a very definite gray breast band, as do all of all of Mathews’ specimens of zanda. I can therefore only interpret Mathews’ description as one of his characteristic flights of fancy. By 1920, Mathews (1920: 248) considered zanda a synonym of rufogularis and listed the type locality as Bolton’s Crab-hole (p. 246), contra Mayr (1967: 11), who put it at Gerahmin.

There are four paratypes at AMNH: AMNH 659346 (Mathews no. 18295), male, Bolton’s Crab Hole, 14 September 1913 ; AMNH 659347 (18293), male, Bell Bird Bore ; AMNH 659348 (10145) and AMNH 659349 (10146), males, Ned’s Well, SE Boro Hill, 9 November 1911 .