Melithreptus atricapillus augustus Mathews

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 : 111

Melithreptus atricapillus augustus Mathews

Melithreptus atricapillus augustus Mathews, 1912a: 393 (Port Augusta, South Australia).

Now Melithreptus brevirostris intergrade between pallidiceps and leucogenys. See Salomonsen, 1967: 395, Schodde and Mason, 1999: 279– 281, Christidis and Boles, 2008: 185–191, and Higgins et al., 2008: 673–674.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 691647 , adult male, collected on the western slopes of the Flinders Range , 31.25S, 138.45E ( USBGN, 1957), northeast of Port Augusta, South Australia, Australia, on 10 October 1911, by S.A. White (no. 335). From the Mathews Collection (no. 10000) via the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: Mathews gave his catalog number of the holotype in the original description and the range as ‘‘Port Augusta.’’ In addition to White’s original label, the holotype bears Mathews and Rothschild type labels. Three paratypes in AMNH are: AMNH 691645 (Mathews no. 9997), AMNH 691646 (9999), males, AMNH 691648 (9998), female, all collected at the type locality on 10 October 1911 by White. There are no additional specimens of this form in SAMA (B. Blaylock, personal commun.). White (1912: 129) found it to be the commonest bird in the Flinders Range.

Salomonsen (1967: 395) recognized augustus, but Schodde and Mason (1999: 281) considered augustus ‘‘unidentifiable or misapplied’’ as specimens from the Flinders Range are from an intergrade zone between pallidiceps and leucogenys.