Muscicapa pomarea, Lesson

Dickinson, Edward C., Lee, Michael, Cibois, Alice, Boussès, Patrick & Fuchs, Jérôme, 2019, Clarifying the nomenclature of Pomarea species (Monarchidae) from the Society Islands, Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’ Club 139 (1), pp. 65-74 : 69-72

Muscicapa pomarea, Lesson , Manuel d’ornithologie

PLATE XVII, fig. A, B, C.

Muscicapa nigra ; corpore toto nigro; capite, dorso, rectricibus alarumm nigris,nebulosis subcaeruleis, rostro pedibusque plumbeis. N.

Although this flycatcher was described by Sparmann [sic] we believe ourselves obliged to provide a new description so that the male and female of this species are clearly known. Thus [Sparrman described] the male, and we are certain of this because we often dissected the bird. Its plumage…’ [and later] ‘The female, which ornithological works have treated as a distinct species based on its description under the name Tahiti Yellow Flycatcher ( Muscicapa lutea, Latham ) which we do not doubt is the female of the Southern Seas Flycatcher…’. [And finally] ‘The old male differs from the previous plumage by its colours which are only two, the black and the white. The first applies to the head, neck and breast; the second applies to the rest of the plumage except for a number of wing feathers which are brown. The bill and feet are lead coloured.

This bird was brought from Maupiti by M. de Blosseville.’

Some observations are required. First, Garnot (1829) introduced the name maupitiensis , placing it above the name Muscicapa pomarea , and attached to it descriptions of all three plumages. However, his first two descriptions clearly apply to Tahiti birds (and no mention is made of Maupiti in connection with them), but the third applies to the bird from Maupiti collected by de Blosseville. Garnot nonetheless applied the name to birds from both Maupiti and Tahiti, thus the original type series includes birds from both islands. Garnot’s text appears to suggest that he was trying to make pomarea a synonym of maupitiensis . Here lies the source of confusion: confusion that must have led Mayr (1986), and perhaps some earlier author(s), to apply the name pomarea only to Maupiti birds.

On p. 643 of livr. 14 of the Voyage de la Coquille, in January 1830, Lesson appeared to accept the comments on pp. 592–593 by Garnot, by listing Muscicapa pomarea from ‘les iles de la Société’, but naturally he treated the younger name maupitiensis as a synonym. This may have reinforced in the minds of Mayr and others the idea that the terra typica was the same (whether Maupiti or Tahiti).

Combining the evidence of Lesson that pomarea is a synonym of nigra —a view shared by Garnot—with what we know of de Blosseville and the island of Maupiti, it is clear that Garnot’s final sentence sought to indicate that the bird collected by de Blosseville was from Maupiti. We therefore designate the specimen depicted in fig. B of Pl. 17 as the lectotype of Muscicapa maupitiensis Garnot, 1829. This specimen is also a syntype of Muscicapa pomarea Lesson & Garnot, 1827, but it must not be considered representative of that taxon.

We also designate MNHN-ZO-2016-276 (see Fig. 5) as a lectotype of Muscicapa pomarea Lesson & Garnot, 1828; this we believe to validly represent the supposed adult male depicted in Pl. 17 of the Voyage de la Coquille. For some reason, this specimen of M. pomarea (now numbered as above) could not be found in the Muséum nationale d’Histoire naturelle, Paris (MNHN) when specimens were being sought for a molecular study.

However, it was perhaps not a male; Lesson and Garnot dissected specimens that were all black and found all to be male, and dissected yellow-ochre specimens and found them to be female, concluding, in error, that they were dealing with one sexually dichromatic species. In fact both adults are black (see Murphy & Mathews 1928: 2).

Early records suggest that the MNHN received four adult and four supposed juveniles from ‘Tahiti’ (J. J. F. J. Jansen in litt. 2018), but evidently some duplicates were not assigned catalogue numbers and now just one adult remains.

Maupiti (see Figs. 3–4 ) is 11 km 2 in area and 380 m high, with an eroding volcanic cone. It lies c. 300 km north-west of Tahiti, is the westernmost tall island in the Society Islands archipelago, and is believed to be the oldest.

We believe de Blosseville obtained a single specimen of the Maupiti bird and gave it to Garnot who was still suffering from a chronic gastric disease he had contracted in Peru some six weeks or so earlier. Garnot’s scientific work during the time the ship spent in the Society Islands was therefore necessarily restricted. Seven months later, in Australia, this illness forced him to return alone to France with part of the collection, presumably including this specimen. His ship sank off the coast of South Africa in mid-July 1824 ( Garnot 1829: 573–575). His sketches may have survived.

Following the recommendation of a referee, we asked Hein van Grouw to advise on whether the Maupiti bird depicted was likely to be an aberrant individual, knowing, of course, that no comparative Maupiti specimens exist. He replied: ‘with all the background information I have now on this case it is in my opinion most likely that the black-and-white pattern in the pictured maupitiensis was not an aberration but indeed an adult feature of the species (perhaps only in the males), as is the case in the Chuuk Monarch Metabolus rugensis ’.

Figures

Figure 3. Map of the Society Islands showing the Leeward Islands, including Bora Bora and Maupiti, and the Windward Islands, including Tahiti.

Figure 4. The island of Maupiti in 1823, engraving by Tardieu, after Jules de Blosseville and Chazal. Pl. 18 from Voyage de la Coquille. Atlas histoire du Voyage (1828) (courtesy of the Auckland War Memorial Museum)