Poephila acuticauda nea Mathews

LeCroy, Mary, 2013, Type Specimens Of Birds In The American Museum Of Natural History Part 11. Passeriformes: Parulidae, Drepanididae, Vireonidae, Icteridae, Fringillinae, Carduelinae, Estrildidae, And Viduinae, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2013 (381), pp. 1-155 : 107-108

Poephila acuticauda nea Mathews

Poephila acuticauda nea Mathews, 1915: 132 (Glencoe, Northern Territory).

Now Poephila acuticauda hecki Heinroth, 1902 . See Mayr et al., 1968: 360; Schodde and Mason,

1999: 757–758; Dickinson, 2003: 732; Payne, 2010: 358–359.

LECTOTYPE: AMNH 721586 , adult male, collected at Glencoe Station , Northern Territory, Australia, on 2 January 1895, by Knut Dahl (no. 1012). From the Mathews Collection (no. 11055) via the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: In the original description, Mathews gave only the type locality for the type of nea. Although he cataloged a male and a female specimen from Glencoe Station, he did not include a catalog number in the original description. AMNH 721586 bears, in addition to Dahl’s label, Mathews and Rothschild type labels, indicating that this was Mathews’ chosen type. Although Hartert, in his lists of Rothschild types, had not reached the Estrildidae with regard to Mathews types, the fact that it bears a Rothschild type label with Mathews’ catalog number added by Hartert, indicates that he accepted it as the type, and it was so cataloged and housed at AMNH, when the Rothschild Collection came to AMNH. In order to remove the ambivalence with regard to the two Glencoe specimens, I hereby designate AMNH 721586, male, the lectotype of Poephila acuticauda nea . The paralectotype is AMNH 721587, female, Glencoe Station, 2 January 1895, by Knut Dahl (no. 1002).

Too late to be included in Mathews’ (1912a: 171–446) ‘‘Reference-list of Australian Birds,’’ specimens collected by Dahl in Northern Territory had been received on loan from Robert Collett, ZMO ( Mathews, 1912b: 25). These specimens later became part of the Mathews Collection and were cataloged by him on 28 February 1912. Dahl wrote an account of his travel in Australia, and described his stay at Glencoe Station during the wet season from late December 1894 to 1 March 1895 ( Dahl, 1927: 162–170, map p. xii). This cattle station was located near Fountainhead, 13.28S, 131.29E (USBGN, 1957).

P. acuticauda nea was published in vol. 2 of Austral Avian Record, not vol. 3, as cited by Mayr et al. (1968: 360). Mathews (1926: 236) later considered it a synonym of hecki.