Machaerirhynchus flaviventer, Gould, 1851

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 : 216

Machaerirhynchus flaviventer novus Rothschild and Hartert

Machaerirhynchus flaviventer novus Rothschild and Hartert, 1912a: 200 (Haidana, Collingwood Bay).

Now Machaerirhynchus flaviventer novus Rothschild and Hartert, 1912. See del Hoyo et al., 2006: 325.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 653609 , adult male, collected at Haidana , Collingwood Bay (not Kumusi River as per Mayr, 1986c: 528), Northern Province, Papua New Guinea, on 15 April 1907, by Albert S. Meek (no. 2839). From the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: This specimen was designated the holotype in the original description by citing the collecting date of the unique specimen from Haidana ( Rothschild and Hartert, 1912a: 201). Confusingly, the type was not among the specimens listed on p. 200, where only Kumusi River specimens are recorded. In the immediately following article on Meek’s collection from Haidana ( Rothschild and Hartert, 1912b: 208), the holotype (listed with Meek’s field number) was identified as Machaerirhynchus xanthogenys albifrons . In 1912, albifrons was the name available for northern New Guinea birds with a white forehead and eyestripe, as albigula was not named until 1939. It is probable that the list of Haidana birds was completed before the Kumusi River specimens were examined; then when novus was described, the conflict was not detected. The Kumusi River specimens, collected in June– August 1907, are the paratypes of M. f. novus. Two males and three females were listed: AMNH 653610 (Meek no. 3237) and 653611 (3378), males; and AMNH 653612 (3377), 653613 (3390), and 653614 (3315), females. Of these, AMNH 653610 and 653612 were exchanged to FMNH in the early 1960s.

I have been unable to find Haidana in Collingwood Bay, or the Kimuta River, which Meek (1913: 171) said he ascended for about a mile. Meek (1913: 171) incorrectly gave the date of his visit as 1908, but on the following page it is correctly given as 1907. The dates and localities in his 1913 book are often unreliable. Because Meek had visited Port Moresby before sailing for the Kumusi River, it was possible that he had collected on Haidana Island, which is nearby; however, the holotype of novus is of the northern New Guinea form.

Hartert (1920: 500) correctly cited the type locality of novus as Haidana, as did Mayr (1941: 138). The type locality was cited without comment as Kumusi River by Mayr (1986c: 528), thereby restricting the type locality to the collecting locality of the paratypes, perhaps because of failure to find where the holotype was collected. Despite the similarity of the names of the ‘‘Kimuta’’ and the Kumusi rivers, the Kumusi River flows into Holnicote Bay, not Collingwood Bay.