Lonchura teerinki Rand, 1940

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 : 124-125

Lonchura teerinki Rand

Lonchura teerinki Rand, 1940: 14 (Bele River, 18 km. north of Lake Habbema, 2200 meters, Snow Mts., Netherland [sic] New Guinea).

Now Lonchura teerinki teerinki Rand, 1940 . See Mayr, et al., 1968: 386; Dickinson, 2003: 736; and Payne, 2010: 375.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 305642 , adult male, collected on the Ibele (5 Bele) River, 18 km

north of Lake Habbema, 2200 m, southern watershed of the Pegunungan Maoke (5 Snow Mountains), Papua Province, Indonesia (5 Netherlands New Guinea), on 23 November 1938, by R. Archbold, A.L. Rand, and W.B. Richardson on the 1938–1939 Archbold Expedition to Netherlands New Guinea.

COMMENTS: Rand gave the AMNH number of the holotype in the original description, but did not list specimens collected. Rand (1942: 514–515) discussed this species, but did not give the total number of specimens collected. The following are paratypes of teerinki : 9 km northeast of Lake Habbema , AMNH 343417–343419 , two males and one female ; Balim River, AMNH 343420–343428 , three males, one male juvenile, four females, one immature sex ?; Ibele River, 18 km north of Lake Habbema, 343429–343450, 12 males, one male juvenile, six females, one female juvenile, one female immature, one juvenile sex?. Of these, AMNH 343417 and 343424 were exchanged to FMNH, and AMNH 343421 and 343443 were sent to MZB. The entire collection from the 1938–1939 expedition was reported on by Rand (1942) .

This third Archbold Expedition to New Guinea was a joint expedition with Netherlands Indies authorities and was also known as the Indisch-Amerikaansche Expeditie. For a summary of the expedition see Archbold et al. (1942).

Rand’s specimens of teerinki were collected in the southern watershed of the Pegunungan Maoke (5 Snow Mountains), including the Balim Valley in the center of that range. Later, Ripley (1964: 74) described the subspecies L. t. mariae, from the northern watershed at Bokindini. Dickinson (2003: 736) did not recognize mariae and considered L. teerinki monotypic; Payne (2010: 375) did recognize Ripley’s subspecies. The cited differences with L. t. teerinki are of the sort that may change with the age of the specimens due to ‘‘foxing’’ of melanins. Jonas Lai, at my request, carried specimens of nominate teerinki to YPM, where Ripley’s specimens are housed, and he and Kristof Zyskowski compared specimens of nominate teerinki with the four fully adult specimens of mariae, including the type, and found that they have retained the very slightly darker back and slightly more contrasting black hood, as is shown in the photographs they made. Thus mariae can be recognized.