Chlamydera nuchalis melvillensis Mathews

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 : 90

Chlamydera nuchalis melvillensis Mathews

Chlamydera nuchalis melvillensis Mathews, 1912b: 52 (Melville Island, Northern Territory).

Now Chlamydera nuchalis nuchalis (Jardine and Selby, 1830) . See Mathews, 1926: 340–350; Hartert, 1929a: 56; Mayr and Jennings, 1952: 11–13; Mayr, 1962c: 180; Gilliard, 1969: 371– 373; Schodde and Mason, 1999: 636–637; and Frith and Frith, 2004: 424–426; 2009a: 403.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 679269 , adult male, collected at Coopers Camp , Apsley Straits, Melville Island, Northern Territory, Australia, on 11 October 1911, by J.P. Rogers (no. 2172). From the Mathews Collection (no. 10776) via the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: Mathews cited his catalog number of the holotype in the original description and gave the range of melvillensis as Melville Island. The following specimens, all collected on Melville Island in October and November 1911 by Rogers, are paratypes of melvillensis: AMNH 679266–679268, males, AMNH 679271–679273, females, cataloged under the following Mathews numbers 10777, 11419–11422, and 11475. I did not find AMNH 679268 in the collection. Specimens collected by Rogers on Melville Island in 1912 arrived too late to be included in melvillensis, which was published on 2 April 1912.

Mayr and Jennings (1952: 11) noted that Gould had restricted the type locality of nuchalis to Western Australia, and they further restricted it to the Port Darwin district of Northern Territory and included melvillensis in the synonymy of nuchalis . However, see comments by Schodde and Mason (1999: 637) who gave reasons for believing that the type locality is likely to be Port Essington, Cobourg Peninsula, Northern Territory.

Coopers Camp was said to be directly across Apsley Strait from the Bathurst Island mission station ( Hart and Pilling, 1964: 101) at 11.45S, 130.41E (Times Atlas ).