Cyornis unicolor infuscata Hartert

LeCroy, M., 2008, Type Specimens Of Birds In The American Museum Of Natural History. Part 7. Passeriformes: Sylviidae, Muscicapidae, Platysteiridae, Maluridae, Acanthizidae, Monarchidae, Rhipiduridae, And Petroicidae, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 313 (1), pp. 1-287 : 95-96

Cyornis unicolor infuscata Hartert Cyornis unicolor harterti Robinson and Kinnear

Cyornis unicolor infuscata Hartert, 1902: 550 (Gunong Tahan) .

Now Cyornis unicolor infuscatus Hartert, 1902 . See Dickinson et al., 2002, Mees, 2004, and Dickinson et al., 2004.

LECTOTYPE: AMNH 605491 , adult male, collected on Gunong Tahan , 1500 ft, 04.38N, 102.14E (BirdLife International, 2001: 2632), Malaysia, in September 1901, by Johannes Waterstradt. From the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: Dickinson et al. (2002) looked in detail at the convoluted nomenclatural history of the various names associated with this and related forms that occur in the Malay Peninsula, Java, Borneo, and Sumatra. Mees (2004) commented on various aspects of the earlier article, and Dickinson et al. (2004) replied. The relevance of this discussion to the above two names is as follows.

Hartert (1902: 550–551) had a single male specimen collected by J. Waterstradt on Gunong Tahan, Malay Peninsula, that he identified with Cyornis unicolor Blyth, 1843 . He did not accept Blyth’s use of Cyornis cyanopolia (ex Boie MS) Blyth, as he considered it a nomen nudum. Subspecifically, he considered Muscicapa infuscata (ex Müller MS) to be an available name, based on Blyth’s (1870: 165) mention of it with regard to females of Cyornis unicolor . Therefore, he used the name Cyornis unicolor infuscata for his specimen and specimens from ‘‘ Java, Borneo and probably also Sumatra’’.

Robinson and Kloss (1918: 155) also thought that no description of Cyornis cyanopolia (ex Boie MS) was included by Blyth and that the name was unavailable. However, as Mees (2004: 197) pointed out, Muscicapa infuscata (ex Müller MS) was considered by Blyth (1870: 165) to be a synonym of Cyornis cyanopolia , which Blyth validated as an available name by giving a description of the females of cyanopolia . Muscicapa infuscata remained an unavailable name. Because Hartert’s name was accompanied by a description, it was available for the Malayan form of C. unicolor . Moreover, because Hartert did not think he was introducing a new name, he did not designate a type; however, the statement by Robinson and Kloss (1918: 155) that Hartert’s ‘‘Gunong Tahan specimen must be regarded as the type of [ infuscata ]’’ designated it the lectotype.

Robinson and Kinnear (1928: 256) later discovered a specimen from Sumatra of Cyornis olivacea Hume in BMNH. This specimen had been obtained from RMNH and was considered one of the type series of Blyth’s ‘‘ Muscicapa infuscata ’’; however, because this was not an available name, it was unnecessary for them to provide a nomen novum for Hartert’s Cyornis unicolor infuscata . In fact, as Dickinson et al. (2002: 211) showed, the BMNH specimen represented the MS name fuscata Müller and not the MS name infuscata Müller. Introduced as a replacement name, Cyornis unicolor harterti Robinson and Kinnear would have the same type as Cyornis unicolor infuscata Hartert. The lectotype designated (unnecessarily as it turns out) by Dickinson et al. for those two names, AMNH 605491, is the same specimen designated by Robinson and Kloss as the lectotype of Cyornis unicolor infuscata Hartert. Thus , no nomenclatural confusion arises. All additional specimens in AMNH from the Rothschild Collection were collected after Hartert’s description was published, so there are no paralectotypes in AMNH.

Watson et al. (1986b: 364) included harterti in the genus Niltava .