Climacteris placens meridionalis Hartert

Pachycephalidae, Aegithalidae, Remizidae, Paridae, Sittidae, Neosittidae, Certhiidae, Rhabdornithidae, Climacteridae, Dicaeidae, Pardalotidae, Nectariniidae, And & Lecroy, Mary, 2010, Type Specimens Of Birds In The American Museum Of Natural History Part 8. Passeriformes:, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2010 (333), pp. 1-178 : 101-102

Climacteris placens meridionalis Hartert

Climacteris placens meridionalis Hartert, 1907: 27 (Owgarra, Angabunga River, 6000–8000 feet, British New Guinea).

Now Cormobates placens meridionalis ( Hartert, 1907) . See Coates, 1990: 238, Schodde and Mason, 1999: 71, and Noske, 2007b: 657–658.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 685251 , female, collected at Owgarra , Angabanga (5 Angabunga) River, not less than 6000 ft, Central Province, Papua New Guinea, on 29 January 1905, by Albert S. Meek (no. A.2038). From the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: Hartert cited Meek’s unique field number of the holotype in the original description. He did not say how many specimens he examined but referred to a previous paper by Rothschild and Hartert (1907). They had studied Meek’s entire 1904– 1905 ‘‘Angabunga River’’ collection, referring the southeastern New Guinea specimens of Climacteris placens only to species and commenting that further comparative material from the Arfak Mountains was needed. At that time Rothschild and Hartert (1907: 474) listed three males and two females from Owgarra, with their Meek numbers, and included ‘‘some specimens’’ from Bihagi, head of the Mambare River on the north watershed of the southeast New Guinea cordillera. The five specimens from Owgarra and six specimens from Bihagi came to AMNH with the Rothschild Collection; the 10 paratypes are: Owgarra, AMNH 685248 (Meek no. A.2014), male, 22 January 1905; AMNH 685249 (A.2015), male, 22 January 1905; AMNH 685250 (A.1983), male, 12 January 1905; AMNH 685252 (A.2013), female, 22 January 1905; Bihagi, head of the Mambare River, AMNH 685253 (A.2478), male, 20 February 1906; AMNH 685254 (A.2638), male, 18 March 1906; AMNH 685255 (A.2410), male, 14 February 1906; AMNH 685256 (A.2409), female, 14 February 1906; AMNH 685257 (A.2601), female, 12 March 1906; AMNH 685258 (A.2632), female, 18 March 1906.

According to the late W.S. Peckover (personal commun.), Owgarra was approximately 5 km west-northwest of the Fane Mission Station and 3 km south of the river now known as the Aura, a tributary of the Angabanga. Fane is shown on the map in Archbold and Rand (1935: pl. 28) at approximately 08.30S, 147.10E. Rothschild and Jordan (1905: 448–454) also provided a detailed account of Meek’s travels on this expedition.