Parotia carolae meeki Rothschild, 1910

Lecroy, Mary, 2014, Type Specimens Of Birds In The American Museum Of Natural History Part 12. Passeriformes: Ploceidae, Sturnidae, Buphagidae, Oriolidae, Dicruridae, Callaeidae, Grallinidae, Corcoracidae, Artamidae, Cracticidae, Ptilonorhynchidae, Cnemophilidae, Paradisaeidae, And Corvidae, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2014 (393), pp. 1-165 : 104

Parotia carolae meeki Rothschild

Parotia carolae meeki Rothschild, 1910b: 35 (Letekwa River, Dutch New Guinea, 2000– 2500 feet).

Now Parotia carolae meeki Rothschild, 1910 . See Hartert, 1919: 128; Mayr, 1962d: 195; Gilliard, 1969: 176–181; Cracraft, 1992: 26–27; Frith and Beehler, 1998: 298–304; and Frith and Frith, 2009b: 472.

LECTOTYPE: AMNH 678161 , male molting into adult plumage, collected near the Otakwa River Valley , 2500 ft, Pegunungan Maoke (= Snow Mountains), Papua Province, Indonesia (formerly Dutch New Guinea), on 1 August 1910, by Albert S. Meek (no. 4558). From the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: No type was designated in the original description, but immature male and female were described. Rothschild and Hartert (1913) reported on Meek’s entire collection, and on page 523 listed the specimens collected, still without designating a type. Hartert (1919: 128), by listing the type as Meek’s no. 4558, designated it the lectotype. Paralectotypes, all collected in 1910, are: Snow Mountains, AMNH 678162 (Meek no. 4846), adult male, 17 October, AMNH 678163 (4913), AMNH 678164 (4914), two males molting into adult male plumage, both collected 29 October, AMNH 678165–678167 (4951, 4896, 4610), three females, collected 23 August–4 November. Of these, AMNH 678166 was exchanged to FMNH in the 1960s. When Meek (1913: 219) left the Otakwa River, he sent his collection from Merauke to Europe. When Rothschild named P. c. meeki , published 31 December 1910, he probably had just received this shipment. Specimens collected on Mount Goliath in 1911 are not part of the type series.

The collecting locality as given in the original description is undoubtedly a misprint for Setekwa River, 04.34S, 137.21E ( Frith and Beehler, 1998: 570), a tributary of the Otakwa River, spelled ‘‘Utakwa’’ on Meek’s label, 04.20S, 137.14E ( Frith and Beehler, 1998: 571); Oetakwa is the Dutch spelling, now usually spelled Otakwa. See Rothschild and Hartert (1913: 473) and LeCroy and Jansen (2011: 182) for further information on Meek’s collecting localities.