Sericornis maculata mellori Mathews, 1912

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 : 128-129

Sericornis maculata mellori Mathews

Sericornis maculata mellori Mathews, 1912a: 356 (Eyre’s Peninsula, South Australia).

Now Sericornis frontalis mellori Mathews, 1912 . See Schodde and Mason, 1999: 165–171.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 601284 , adult male, collected on Cumbrutla Creek , Hundred of Mangalo , Cleve Hills (near Mount Desperate, 33.34S, 136.33E; USBGN, 1957b), central Eyre Peninsula, South Australia, Australia, in June 1911, by J.W. Mellor. From the Mathews Collection (no. 9467) via the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: Mathews cited his catalog number of the holotype in the original description. In addition to the field label and the Rothschild type label, this specimen also bears a Mathews type label and a yellow ‘‘Figured’’ label, indicating that it was illustrated in Mathews (1922e: pl. 456, bottom, opp. p. 20, text p. 21), where the figured male is confirmed as the type of mellori.

Apparently, specimens that were cataloged by Mathews until the end of 1911 were used by him in Mathews (1912a), with some being types of taxa named in that publication. Therefore, 12 specimens collected by S.A. White on the Eyre Peninsula 23 August–9 September 1911 and cataloged by Mathews (nos. 9706–9717) on 13 November 1911 were available to him and should be considered paratypes: AMNH 601285–601296. There are additional paratypes in SAMA (P. Horton and B. Blaylock, personal commun.).

Mellor (1911: 110–111) apparently collect- ed this holotype during the course of a trip in mid-June 1911 to the central Eyre Peninsula to capture Mallee Fowl for release on Kangaroo Island, although no mention is made of other birds collected. The original label is not present on this specimen, and the place names are misspelled on Mathew’s collection label. The localities as cited above are taken from Mellor (1911).