Acanthiza pusilla northi Mathews

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 : 156-157

Acanthiza pusilla northi Mathews

Acanthiza pusilla northi Mathews, 1922a: 413 , 431 (Wilson’s Inlet, South-West Australia).

Now Acanthiza apicalis apicalis Gould, 1847 . See Mayr, 1986b: 437, and Schodde and Mason, 1999: 201–203.

LECTOTYPE: AMNH 600670 , female, collected at Wilson Inlet , 35.00S, 117.42E ( Johnstone and Storr, 2004: 515), Western Australia, Australia, on 10 April 1910, by F.L. Whitlock. From the Mathews Collection (no. 4775) via the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: In order to decide whether AMNH 600670 was Mathews’ intended type of northi, it was necessary to reconstruct the sequence of events leading to the naming of this form. At the time Mathews was writing, Gould’s type locality for nominate apicalis was generally considered to be either Swan River or King George Sound in Western Australia. At this point Mathews would have identified the Wilson Inlet specimens as apicalis . This was probably the state of affairs when the illustrated adult female was said to be Acanthiza pusilla apicalis Gould from Wilson Inlet, collected on the 10th of November (sic) 1910. As an added complication, Mathews referred to this illustration as the top figure of plate 445; however, plate 445 is of Dulciornis (5 Megalurus ) alisteri ! This is a lapsus for plate 448 ( Mathews, 1922a: pl. 448, top fig., opp. p. 412).

A few pages farther along, Mathews (1922a: 431) then declared the type locality of Gould’s apicalis to be Swan River (present day Perth area) and described Acanthiza pusilla northi from Wilson Inlet (near King George Sound). However, the name of the figured bird from Wilson Inlet was not changed on p. 413 from A. pusilla apicalis to A. p. northi, nor did Mathews (1922a: 434) indicate that A. p. northi was figured but still listed A. p. apicalis from Perth as figured. None of the three Perth specimens from the Mathews Collection bears a ‘‘Figured’’ label, and only AMNH 600670 of the Wilson Inlet specimens has this label.

Whitlock (not Wilson, as miscopied on the Rothschild label) collected a large series of mostly immature specimens of Acanthiza apicalis at Wilson Inlet in November 1909 (1 specimen), January–May 1910 (24), and March 1911 (1). None of these specimens is marked ‘‘type’’. The adult female from Wilson Inlet that Mathews had figured was said to have been collected on 10 November 1910. None of the specimens from Perth and only a nestling from Wilson Inlet were collected in November. Apparently, Mathews’ citing of November for the figured bird was a careless misreading of the ‘‘4’’ (April) as an ‘‘11’’. This seems highly probable if he copied the date from his catalog rather than from the specimen label, for in his catalog the ‘‘4’’ resembles an ‘‘H’’.

In summary, it seems that Mathews decided, while writing about ‘‘ Acanthiza pusilla ’’, to restrict Gould’s type locality of apicalis to Swan River (Perth), allowing him to name the Wilson Inlet form, and then he failed to properly correct his text to reflect this decision. He probably intended the figured bird to be the type, but failed to state this. Because of the rampant confusion surrounding this name, I hereby designate AMNH 600670 (Mathews no. 4775) the lectotype of Acanthiza pusilla northi Mathews, 1922 . It is a specimen from the type series and the type locality of northi; and, because it bears the yellow ‘‘Figured’’ label, it is the Wilson Inlet specimen illustrated. It also bears Whitlock’s field label and a Rothschild label printed ‘‘Ex. coll. G.M. Mathews’’. Someone in a hand unknown has written a reference to the description of northi on this label, and the reverse of the Rothschild label has the pencilled notation ‘‘type of northi’’.

Of the remaining 25 specimens of northi from Wilson Inlet, I found 14 in Mathews’ catalog (nos. 4773, 4774, 4776–4784, 5500, 5503, and 5504). However, he would have had Whitlock’s entire collection from Wilson Inlet in hand by the time he named northi in 1922. AMNH 600646–600669 and 600671 are therefore all paralectotypes.

Mayr (1986b: 437) synonymized northi with leeuwinensis. However, Schodde and Mason (1999: 203) found the Gould syntypes in ANSP, labelled ‘‘W. Australia’’, too faded to be identified subspecifically. Because Gould specimens from Swan River would come from a zone of intergradation, Schodde and Mason considered King George Sound the appropriate type locality for apicalis , noting that leeuwinensis became a junior synonym of apicalis , as would northi.