Rhinomyias ruficrissa Sharpe

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 : 80

Rhinomyias ruficrissa Sharpe

Rhinomyias ruficrissa Sharpe, 1887: 441 (Kina Balu).

Now Rhinomyias ruficauda ruficrissa Sharpe, 1887 . See Vaurie, 1952: 24–25, and Smythies, 2000: 556.

LECTOTYPE: AMNH 652745 , adult female, collected on Mount Kinabalu , 3000 ft, 06.03N, 116.32E (Times Atlas), Sabah, Malaysia, on 4 March 1887, by John Whitehead (no. 1061). From the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: In the original description, Sharpe did not designate a type, but described both male and female without giving dates or Whitehead numbers. Specimens of taxa described by Sharpe (1887) would have been collected on Whitehead’s 1887 trip to Kinabalu, with Whitehead (1893b: 185) sending ahead to Sharpe two specimens of any form that he thought might be new. In Sharpe’s later paper ( Sharpe and Whitehead, 1889: 200), he listed four specimens, two collected in 1887 and two in 1888, and said that the specimens from the ‘‘second journey agree with the types’’, implying that the two 1887 specimens listed were his (syn)types. Part of the Whitehead collection remained at BMNH, but large portions of it were purchased by Rothschild from Whitehead himself or from his family after his death. Two specimens collected on Kinabalu by Whitehead in 1887 came to AMNH with the Rothschild Collection. AMNH 652745 (Whitehead no. 1061), adult female, collected on 4 March 1887, is marked ‘‘Type RBS[harpe]’’ in Sharpe’s hand, and Hartert (1920: 499) listed it as the type of ruficrissa , thereby designating it the lectotype. It bears a Rothschild type label.

Unfortunately, Sharpe did not publish Whitehead’s field numbers for the specimens he studied. The second Rothschild Collection specimen, AMNH 652747, does not have the usual printed Whitehead label, bearing only Whitehead’s field label with his number ‘‘1361’’ and ‘‘m’’ for male. It was almost certainly collected in 1887, as Whitehead’s 1888 specimens have field numbers higher than 2000. However, it seems unlikely that it is Sharpe’s male specimen collected on 26 February, as it possesses a higher field number than the female collected on 4 March. Additionally, most of Sharpe’s types of Whitehead material have full data entered on Whitehead tags and are initialled by Sharpe. Given the lack of any indication that Sharpe used this specimen as one of the two upon which he based his description, I do not consider AMNH 652747 to be a paralectotype. Warren and Harrison (1971) did not list any primary type material of ruficrissa in BMNH, but the male paralectotype collected on 26 February 1887 may be in that collection.