Vosea whitemanensis Gilliard

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 : 137

Vosea whitemanensis Gilliard

Vosea whitemanensis Gilliard, 1960: 2 (Wild Dog Range, Whiteman Mountains, central New Britain, Bismarck Archipelago).

Now Melidectes whitemanensis ( Gilliard, 1960) . See Diamond, 1971: 482, Coates, 1990: 256, Mayr and Diamond, 2001: 398, Dickinson, 2003: 438, and Higgins et al., 2008: 611.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 708117 , adult male, collected at Camp 12, Wild Dog Mountain, Whiteman Mountains, 05.00S, 150.00E (PNG, 1984), West New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea, on 22 December 1958, by E. Thomas Gilliard.

COMMENTS: The AMNH number of the holotype was given in the original description, and measurements were given for two males and six females. Paratypes are: Camp 9, Mount Uali, AMNH 778166 , female, 10 December 1958 ; Camp 12, Wild Dog Mountain, AMNH 778167 , female, AMNH 778168 , male, AMNH 778169–778172 , females, 16–22 December 1958 .

The altitude at which the type was collected was given on the original label as 7000 ft, but Gilliard had marked through this and pencilled in 5600 ft. Wild Dog Camp 12, from which this specimen was collected, was at 5200 ft. On his return to sea level, Gilliard’s altimeter was found to have malfunctioned, and the corrected altitudes for the various camps are given in Gilliard and LeCroy (1967: 178). See Gilliard (1961: 272) for a painting of this species from life by Margaret Gilliard. It is also illustrated in Mayr and Diamond (2001: pl. 9), but there the color is much too brown and the bill too short.

Diamond (1971: 482) included Vosea in the genus Melidectes and suggested that it was most closely related to M. fuscus . This was followed by Mayr and Diamond (2001: 398), Dickinson (2003: 438), and Higgins et al. (2008: 611), but Vosea was retained by Coates (1990: 256).