Dacnis venusta Lawrence, 1862

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 : 99

Dacnis venusta Lawrence

Dacnis venusta Lawrence, 1862: 464 ( New Granada).

Now Dacnis venusta venusta Lawrence, 1862 . See Hellmayr, 1935: 281, Wetmore et al., 1984: 524– 525, Isler and Isler, 1999: 332–334, and Dickinson, 2003: 813.

SYNTYPES: AMNH 40376 , adult male, 1862 ; AMNH 40377 , adult male, 1862 ; AMNH 40378 , female, undated ; AMNH 40379 , female, 1862, all collected on the line of the Panama Railroad, Isthmus of Panama. From the George N. Lawrence Collection .

COMMENTS: In the original description, Lawrence did not designate a type or say how many specimens he had, but referred back to Lawrence (1861b: 319) where he had listed a female Dacnis as his no. 166. In this part of his catalog the collection was made by both James McLeannan and John R. Galbraith and this specimen is the undated AMNH 40378, above. Lawrence (1862: 461) noted that McLeannan had remained in the Isthmus and had sent further specimens. The three additional syntypes of venusta were collected by McLeannan alone in 1862. All four specimens are marked ‘‘Type’’ by Lawrence . AMNH 40376 has the number 372 on Lawrence’s label; AMNH 40377 is numbered 303 and also bears a small tag with the no. 299 and M; AMNH 40378 has no. 416 and no small tag; AMNH 40379 has no. 303 and a small tag with the no. 299 and F. The small tags were apparently McLeannan’s field tags, but I did not discover the significance of the numbers.

The Lion Hill Station of the railroad across the Isthmus of Panama was the home station of McLeannan and is usually considered the type locality of his specimens.