Zosterops palpebrosa cacharensis Baker

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 : 7-8

Zosterops palpebrosa cacharensis Baker

Zosterops palpebrosa cacharensis Baker, 1922: 144 (Gunjong, N. Cachar) .

Now Zosterops palpebrosus palpebrosus (Temminck, 1824) . See Mees, 1957: 53–60, Mees,

1969: 248–249, Dickinson, 2003: 625, and van Balen, 2008: 446–447.

SYNTYPES: AMNH 699944, AMNH 699- 945, AMNH 699946, adult males, collected at Gunjong, 25.19N, 93.01E ( Lozupone et al., 2004), Northern Cachar, Assam, India, on 7 December 1895, by E.C.S. Baker. From the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: In the original description, Baker gave as his type a male collected at Gunjong on 7 December 1895, from his collection and housed in the Rothschild Collection. There are three males with those data that came to AMNH with the Rothschild Collection ; on none of them does Baker give any indication of type status, and the Rothschild type label is the only indication that AMNH 699946 was the selected type specimen. Hartert’s (1928: 208) later listing of types in the Rothschild Collection also failed to distinguish the one with the type label from the other two with the same data. Because there seems to be no indication of which specimen Baker himself selected as his type and because the presence of the type label alone does not serve in that respect ( ICZN, 1999: 8, Art. 9.6), I consider all three to be syntypes .

Mayr (1967: 295) included the whitebellied cacharensis as a synonym of Z. p. siamensis. Strangely, Mees (1957: 58) did not trace the type of this form, even though in the original description it was said to be in the Rothschild Collection.