Melilestes fergussonis Hartert

Mary, 2011, Type Specimens Of Birds In The American Museum Of Natural History Part 9. Passeriformes: Zosteropidae And Meliphagidae, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2011 (348), pp. 1-193 : 47

Melilestes fergussonis Hartert

Melilestes fergussonis Hartert (in Rothschild and Hartert), 1896b: 237 (Fergusson Island).

Now Oedistoma iliolophus fergussonis (Hartert, 1896) . See Salomonsen, 1967: 343, Coates, 1990: 313–315, Dickinson, 2003: 451, and Gregory, 2008: 337.

LECTOTYPE: AMNH 693665 , adult male, collected on Fergusson Island , D’Entrecasteaux Archipelago, Milne Bay Province, Papua New Guinea, in October 1894, by Albert S. Meek (no. 15). From the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: No type was designated in the original description, and the number of specimens was not specified. Rothschild and Hartert (1903b: 438) listed as the type Meek’s specimen number 15, thereby designating it the lectotype. There are four paralectotypes in AMNH: AMNH 693664, 693666–693668, two males and two females collected by Meek on Fergusson Island in 1894. His base was near Nade (5 Nadi, as spelled by Meek), ca. 09.40S, 150.42E, on the southwest coast of Fergusson ( Meek, 1913: 45).

Dickinson (2003: 451) used the adjectival neuter fergussone. Gregory (2008: 337), however, noted that the subspecific name fergussonis is not ‘‘demonstrably adjectival and should be treated as a noun in genitive case, therefore invariable.’’