Tanagra portoricensis Bryant

LeCroy, Mary, 2012, Type Specimens Of Birds In The American Museum Of Natural History Part 10. Passeriformes: Emberizidae: Emberizinae, Catamblyrhynchinae, Cardinalinae, Thraupinae, And Tersininae, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2012 (368), pp. 1-125 : 81

Tanagra portoricensis Bryant

Tanagra portoricensis Bryant, 1866: 252 ( Porto Rico).

Now Spindalis portoricensis ( Bryant, 1866) . See Bangs and Penard, 1925: 202, Hellmayr, 1936: 243, Garrido et al., 1997, Isler and Isler, 1999: 180, and Dickinson, 2003: 820.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 40802 , adult male, collected on Puerto Rico, undated, by Robert Swift. From USNM (no. 36502), via the H. Bryant Collection (no. 974), and the George N. Lawrence Collection.

COMMENTS: When Bryant named portoricensis he gave the USNM number of the

holotype in the original description, and according to his introduction ( Bryant, 1866: 248), the specimens collected by Swift and George Latimer on Puerto Rico were presented to the Smithsonian Institution. Bangs and Penard (1925: 202) noted that the type of portoricensis could not be found in USNM and Hellmayr (1936: 243) considered it lost. According to James Dean (personal commun.), the specimen was sent to Bryant. Lawrence apparently acquired the specimen from Bryant, or more likely, from Mrs. Bryant after her husband’s death. Other Bryant specimens from the Lawrence Collection were noted by Lawrence as being from Mrs. Bryant.

Because Lawrence at times obtained specimens from USNM and from the Bryant Collection, a check of his specimens of this species seemed worthwhile and did, in fact, uncover the type at AMNH. It had not previously been recognized as a type and was not so marked.

See Garrido et al. (1997) for a summary of systematic treatments of the genus Spindalis and evidence for considering portoricensis a full species.