Prionochilus plateni Blasius

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 : 106-107

Prionochilus plateni Blasius

Prionochilus plateni Blasius, 1888a (February) : 335 (Palawan).

Now Prionochilus plateni plateni Blasius, 1888 . See Salomonsen, 1960a, 18–22, 25–26, Dickinson et al., 1991: 388, and Cheke and Mann, 2008b: 369–370.

LECTOTYPE: AMNH 698529 , adult male, collected at Puerto Princesa, 09.44 N, 118.44E ( Dickinson et al., 1991: 424), Palawan Island , Philippines, on 22 July 1887, by Carl C. and Margarete Platen (specimen ‘‘b’’). From the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: Blasius’ descriptions, based on material collected by the Platens in 1887, have given rise to various problems, beginning with the descriptions of the new forms appearing in a local newspaper, Braunschweigische Anzeigen (on 12 February 1888 for P. plateni ), closely followed in April 1888 by descriptions of some of the same populations by Sharpe, based on Whitehead’s collection on Palawan. The problem of dating was clarified by Blasius (1888b: 372–375). I have not seen the original newspaper description, but this was republished within quotation marks in Blasius (1888c: 313).

Additionally, the Platens’ specimens were divided, after having been studied by Blasius, between the collections at SNMBG, where Blasius was curator, and the private collection of Adolph Nehrkorn, who had apparently sponsored the collecting (see Hartert, 1920a: 431). Further complicating matters, Blasius often did not designate a type and Nehrkorn exchanged an unknown number of Platen specimens with Rothschild, some of which were part of type series. Hinkelmann and Heinze (1990) were not aware that part of the Platen material was in AMNH (via Rothschild). At that time, I wrote Hinkelmann after checking the AMNH collection for related material. This was passed on to Hevers (2005), who incorporated this material in his more extensive list of types in SNMBG.

In the original description of P. plateni , no type was designated and the number of specimens in the type series was not given. Later, Hinkelmann and Heinze (1990: 622) reported that there were at least 10, five of which were in SNMBG and were listed as syntypes of P. plateni . Two syntypes of P. plateni were also exchanged to Rothschild by Nehrkorn, both of which were marked ‘‘Type’’ on their labels. Hartert (1920a: 430) listed the male specimen, collected on 22 July 1887, as the type, thereby designating it the lectotype. The second specimen, AMNH 698533, male, collected at Puerto Princesa on 13 July 1887 by the Platens (specimen ‘‘a’’), becomes a paralectotype, as do the rest of the syntypes. See also Hevers (2005: 455). As this description was based on specimens collected in 1887, three AMNH specimens collected by the Platens in 1888 have no nomenclatural standing.

Salomonsen (1960a: 28) noted that there was a syntype of plateni in both BMNH and AMNH, not mentioning the second syntype in AMNH or the syntypes in SNMBG, and selected the AMNH specimen as the lectotype, not realizing that it had already been designated the lectotype by Hartert.