Muscicapa atra J.R. Forster, 1844

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 : 193

Muscicapa atra J.R. Forster Monarcha Mendozae Hartlaub

Muscicapa atra J.R. Forster, 1844: 172 (in insulae Sanctae Christinae seu Weitaho).

Monarcha Mendozae Hartlaub, 1854: 170 (in insulae Sanctae Christinae seu Weitaho).

Now Pomarea mendozae mendozae ( Hartlaub, 1854) . See Murphy and Mathews, 1928: 2, Watson et al., 1986c: 492–493, Cibois et al., 2004, and del Hoyo et al., 2006: 298.

Neotype: AMNH 196143 , adult male, collected on Tahuata Island , 09.57S, 139.05W ( USBGN, 1957a), Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia, on 27 November 1922, by Rollo H. Beck on the Whitney South Sea Expedition (no. 6533).

COMMENTS: Hartlaub (1854: 170) provid- ed Monarcha mendozae as a new name for Muscicapa atra J.R. Forster, 1844: 172 (not Muscicapa atra Forster, 1844: 170–171 ). Murphy and Mathews (1928: 2) said: ‘‘The type was apparently not an adult, but its locality was fixed in insula Sanctae Christinae seu Weitaho (5 Tahuata).’’ They then designated AMNH 196143, an adult male, as the neotype, noting that ‘‘In the absence of an existing type specimen, it would be preferable to select a female as the neotype but, unfortunately, we have no adult female from Tahuata.’’ Having established that the nominate form of the species was from Tahuata and designated a neotype, Murphy and Mathews then studied the large collection of specimens from the Marquesas and named the following new subspecies.