Melithreptus atricapillus insularis Mathews

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 : 110

Melithreptus atricapillus insularis Mathews

Melithreptus atricapillus insularis Mathews, 1912a: 394 (King Island).

Now Melithreptus brevirostris magnirostris North, 1905 . See Schodde and Mason, 1999: 279–281, Christidis and Boles, 2008: 185–191, and Higgins et al., 2008: 673–674.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 691686 , unsexed, Point Morrison , 35.44S, 137.47E ( USBGN, 1957), Kangaroo Island (not King Island ), South Australia, Australia, on 27 December 1897. From the Mathews Collection (no. 3000) via the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: In the original description, Mathews gave his catalog number of the holotype but erroneously said that it was from King Island. The original label is not present on this specimen, but the locality is given on Mathews’ collection label as ‘‘Pt. Morrison, King Is.’’ However, in his catalog, Mathews entered this specimen as from ‘‘Pt. Morrison, K.I.’’ and apparently made an erroneous assumption when he filled out a new label. In addition to Mathews’ collection label, the specimen bears Mathews and Rothschild type labels. Abbott (1973: 139) was the first to call attention to this erroneous type locality.

Mathews (1924: 274) described, but did not figure, this specimen and noted that it was the type of insularis, without correcting the type locality.