Melidectes princeps Mayr and Gilliard

Mary, 2011, Type Specimens Of Birds In The American Museum Of Natural History Part 9. Passeriformes: Zosteropidae And Meliphagidae, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2011 (348), pp. 1-193 : 132

Melidectes princeps Mayr and Gilliard

Melidectes princeps Mayr and Gilliard, 1951: 13 (Mt. Wilhelm, Bismarck Mountains, Central Highlands, Mandated Territory of New Guinea).

Now Melidectes princeps Mayr and Gilliard, 1951 . See Salomonsen, 1967: 416, Coates, 1990: 258– 259, and Higgins et al., 2008: 612.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 348207 , adult male, collected on Mount Wilhelm , south drainage, 11,800 ft, 05.45S, 145.00E (PNG, 1984), Bismarck Mountains, Simbu Province, Papua New Guinea, on 10 June 1950, by Robert

Doyle on the 1950 Gilliard Expedition to New Guinea.

COMMENTS: The AMNH number of the holotype was cited in the original description and princeps was said to occur above 10,000 ft in the Kubor Mountains , on Mount Hagen and on Mount Wilhelm. The name was published in 1951, so only those specimens collected on the 1950 expedition are paratypes: Mount Orata , Kubor Mountains, May, AMNH 705810 , 705811 , 705811 bis, males, AMNH 705812 , female ; Mount Wilhelm , June, AMNH 705813 , 705814 , males, AMNH 705815 , male?, AMNH 705816– 705818 , females ; Mount Hagen , July, AMNH 705819–705821 , males, AMNH 705822 , female?, AMNH 705823 , juvenile, AMNH 705824 , sex?. Of these, AMNH 705814 and 705816 were exchanged to FMNH and AMNH 705824 was sent to AM .

Coates (1990: 256, 258) included this species in the genus Melionyx . See Mayr and Gilliard (1954) for a report on Gilliard’s 1950 and 1952 expeditions.