Cyclorhis (sic) coibae Hartert

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 : 34

Cyclorhis (sic) coibae Hartert

Cyclorhis (sic) coibae Hartert, 1901e: 33 (Coiba Island, off Panama).

Now Cyclarhis gujanensis coibae Hartert, 1901 . See Hellmayr, 1935: 197–198; Blake, 1968: 105; Wetmore et al., 1984: 203–204; Dickinson, 2003: 482; Olson, 2008; and Brewer, 2010: 415.

LECTOTYPE: AMNH 505413 , [immature] male, Coiba Island , 07.28N, 81.47W ( Siegel and Olson, 2008), Veragua Archipelago, Panama (Col. S.A., as on label), on 20 April 1901, by J.H. Batty. From the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: Hartert, in the original description, did not designate a type or say how many specimens he examined from Coiba Island. Later, he ( Hartert, 1920: 456) listed the adult male collected on 20 April 1901 as the type, thereby designating it the lectotype. Both Hellmayr (1935: 197) and Wetmore et al. (1984: 204) mention the fact that this type specimen is immature, based largely on the fact that it has a uniform blackish brown bill. Neither the original Batty label nor the Rothschild label indicated that the bird was immature. However, Hartert wrote ‘‘ad s’’ on the Rothschild type label of AMNH 505413, confirming that it was his intended type specimen.

Two male specimens from the Rothschild Collection, collected by Batty on 20 April 1901, were cataloged at AMNH. The second specimen, AMNH 505414, is a paralectotype. Hartert made no comment on the Batty or Rothschild labels as to the age of this specimen. It was also examined by Hellmayr, who commented that it was fully adult, with the ‘‘bill pale horn brown with a plumbeous spot at the base of the lower mandible.’’

Ornithologists have long been suspicious of Batty’s collecting localities on the islands off Panama ( Wetmore, 1957: 6–8), and Olson (2008) has studied the Batty specimens that were bought by Rothschild, showing that many of the localities were falsified. That the two Coiba Island specimens of C. coibae did come from that island was verified by Wetmore (1957: 82–83) when he visited the island and collected it there. The form is still considered valid.