Batis soror pallidigula van Someren

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 : 100

Batis soror pallidigula van Someren

Batis soror pallidigula van Someren, 1921: 103 (Lumbo) .

Now Batis soror Reichenow, 1903 . See Traylor, 1986: 382, and Urban et al., 1997: 587–588.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 649125 , adult female, collected at Lumbo , 15.00S, 40.40E (Times Atlas), Mozambique, on 17 July 1918, by V.G.L. van Someren. From the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: In the original description, van Someren noted that his type, a female collected on 17 July 1918, was in the Rothschild Collection. AMNH 649125 is the only female from the van Someren collection collected on that date. Later he ( van Someren, 1932: 297) said that he had had five specimens. Only one of these in addition to the holotype came to AMNH: paratype AMNH 649123 , male, collected at Lumbo on 17 July 1918 ; it is marked ‘‘Cotype s pallidigula’’.

There are two specimens from the Rothschild Collection in AMNH collected by Arthur Loveridge at Lumbo: AMNH 649124, male, 17 July 1918, and AMNH 649126, female, undated. Both are identified as pallidigula by Loveridge and marked by him ‘‘Co-type of race’’. Although they were collected at the type locality and one of them on the same day as the type, I find no evidence that they were in van Someren’s possession when he named the subspecies. I consider them topotypes. Loveridge (in Friedmann and Loveridge, 1937: 15) noted that he had collected at Lumbo in the vicinity of the British camp from June to November 1918.