Pyrenestes ostrinus rothschildi Neumann

LeCroy, Mary, 2013, Type Specimens Of Birds In The American Museum Of Natural History Part 11. Passeriformes: Parulidae, Drepanididae, Vireonidae, Icteridae, Fringillinae, Carduelinae, Estrildidae, And Viduinae, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2013 (381), pp. 1-155 : 86-87

Pyrenestes ostrinus rothschildi Neumann

Pyrenestes ostrinus rothschildi Neumann, 1910: 528 (Warri) .

Now Pyrenestes ostrinus (Vieillot, 1805) . See Hartert, 1919a: 144; Chapin, 1954b: 490–494; Mayr et al., 1968: 319–320; Smith, 1990: 381– 414; Dickinson, 2003: 728; Fry and Keith, 2004: 317–321; and Payne, 2010: 322.

LECTOTYPE: AMNH 728281 , adult male, collected at Warri , 05.36N 05.50E ( Chapin, 1954a), lower Niger River, southern Nigeria, on 11 May 1897, by Felix Roth. From the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: In the original description, Neumann designated as the type a male collected at Warri on 11 May 1897 and listed his type series: in the Rothschild Collection, three males, two females from Warri; two males, four females, one juvenile from Buguma and Degama, Niger Delta; one female from Abutshi. Also in his type series were a male and a female from Cameroon in the Berlin Museum. All three of the males from Warri were collected on the same date; one of them is not the type as it is molting into adult plumage, but the other two males cannot be differentiated on the basis of the type description nor from Hartert’s (1919a: 144) listing of the type. AMNH 728281 was Neumann’s intended type as the Rothschild Museum label is annotated by Neumann with the new name and ‘‘Typus,’’ and it bears a Rothschild type label. This specimen was cataloged as the type when the Rothschild Collection came to AMNH and has always been so considered ; in order to remove the ambiguity, I hereby designate AMNH 728281 the lectotype of Pyrenestes ostrinus rothschildi .

Paralectotypes in AMNH are difficult to list with certainty. The two additional males and two females collected by Roth at Warri are definitely paralectotypes: AMNH 728282, male; AMNH 728283, sexed as a male but in female plumage; AMNH 728284, sexed as a female but in male plumage with the only sign of immaturity a brown crown (these latter two specimens may have had the labels put on the wrong bird), collected on 11 May 1897; AMNH 728285, female, collected on 15 May 1897. Also a definite paralectotype: AMNH 728286, female, collected at Abutshi by Kemp in September 1901. The seven specimens listed by Neumann from Buguma and Degama collected by Ansorge, all in 1902, are more problematic. There are nine specimens in AMNH from those localities, some of which bear both the names coccineus and rothschildi. In some cases coccineus is marked out, in other cases not. I have included as paralectotypes only those specimens which bear the name rothschildi written by Neumann, whether or not the name coccineus appears: Buguma, AMNH 728287, male, 5 June; AMNH 728289, female, 16 July; AMNH 728290, female, 21 May; AMNH 728291, female, 21 May; AMNH 728292, female, 9 May. Degama, AMNH 728294, male, 15 March; AMNH 728295, female juvenile, 9 May. AMNH 728288, male, 16 July, from Buguma, and AMNH 728293, male, 3 August, from Degama have only the name coccineus written by Neumann, and are not considered paralectotypes.

Species and subspecies recognition has varied greatly over time and the concensus of opinion most recently is that three species comprising a superspecies should be recognized: Pyrenestes minor , P. ostrinus , and P. sanguineus , with P. ostrinus monotypic (see Fry and Keith, 2004: 317–318, and Payne, 2010: 322–323).