Lichenostomus plumulus gracemeri Mathews

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 : 89

Lichenostomus plumulus gracemeri Mathews

Lichenostomus plumulus gracemeri Mathews, 1913d: 77 (Gracemere, Queensland).

Now Lichenostomus plumulus graingeri (Mathews, 1912) . See Schodde and Mason, 1999: 249–250, Christidis and Boles, 2008: 185–191, and Higgins et al., 2008: 606–607.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 695452 , female, according to the label collected at Gracemere , Queensland, Australia, on 14 May 1881, by Carl Lumholtz. From the Mathews Collection (no. 18203) via the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: In the original description, Mathews gave the collecting date of this single specimen from ‘‘Gracemere’’; his catalog number was not cited, but it is noted on his type and collection labels. According to Mathews’ catalog, the holotype was obtained from [Robert] Collett, ZMO, who sent Mathews specimens collected by K. Dahl and by C. Lumholtz in Australia. The specimen also bears an original label and an AMNH type label .

The exact locality at which this specimen was taken is uncertain, as this inland species is unlikely to have come from Gracemere. The specimen bears a folded blue paper label on which is written ‘‘ ♀, Gracemere, 14/5/81,’’ but there is no label on which Lumholtz’s name appears. Furthermore, Mathews did not catalog it with the other specimens that he received from Collett, but as a single specimen, much later, attributed to Collett. On the other hand, Lumholtz was collecting other specimens in May 1881, which he labeled ‘‘Gracemere,’’ but which apparently came from farther west (see, for example, LeCroy, 2010: 123–124).

Lumholtz (1889: 17) had his base at Gracemere, a cattle station of the Messrs. Archer, situated 7 miles from Rockhampton, but said ( Lumholtz, 1889: 27, 29): ‘‘My excursions extended not only to the immediate vicinity of Gracemere, but I made journeys of investigation to regions 200 miles away … At Peak Downs [22.56S, 148.05E, USBGN, 1957], situated about 200 miles west of Rockhampton, I received my first impression of genuine native Australian scenery.’’ It was not until July 1881 that Lumholtz prepared to leave on his long trip into western Queensland, so it appears likely that he collected this specimen on one of his shorter forays to the west.

In the original description, Mathews gave the range of gracemeri as Queensland and Northern Territory. There are two AMNH specimens from the Mathews Collection, collected at Alexandria, Northern Territory. AMNH 695419 (Mathews no. 3276), female, collected in July 1905 by Wilfred Stalker, is a paratype; AMNH 695420, an unsexed and undated specimen collected by Stalker, is also probably a paratype although I did not find it in Mathews’ catalog. Ingram (1907, 1909), in his reports on Stalker’s collection from Alexandria, did not list these specimens.