Ptilotis melanops meltoni 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 : 101-102

Ptilotis melanops meltoni Mathews

Ptilotis melanops meltoni Mathews, 1912a: 408 (Victoria) .

Now Lichenostomus melanops meltoni (Mathews, 1912) . See Salomonsen, 1967: 385, Schodde and Mason, 1999: 243–244, Christidis and Boles, 2008: 185–191, and Higgins et al., 2008: 604– 605.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 695203 , adult female, collected at Melton , 37.41S, 144.35E ( USBGN, 1957), Victoria, Australia, on 8 June 1908, by Thomas Tregellas. From the Mathews Collection (no. 1532) via the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: Mathews cited his catalog number of the holotype in the original description and gave the range of the form as ‘‘ Victoria.’’ In addition to a small field tag and Tregellas’ original label, the specimen bears Mathews and Rothschild type labels and a ‘‘ Figured’ ’ label, indicating that the specimen was illustrated in Mathews (1924: pl. 536, upper fig., opp. p. 503, text p. 508), where it is confirmed as the type of meltoni. Paratypes are specimens collected in Victoria and cataloged before 31 January 1912, the publication date of meltoni: AMNH 695199 (Mathews no. 5121), male, Melton, 8 June 1908, received from Tregellas but collected by C. Cole ; AMNH 695205 , AMNH 695206 (3235), and AMNH 695207 (3234), females, Stawell , 15, 28, and 15 September 1908, respectively, by L.G. Chandler ; AMNH 695215 (3236), female, Little River, 31 August 1908, by Chandler. One number in Mathews catalog probably represented both AMNH 695205 and 695206. A number of other specimens are probably paratypes, but I did not find them in Mathews’ catalog: Melton , AMNH 695198 , male, 6 June 1910, by Chandler ; AMNH 695200 , male, 8 June 1908, by Cole ; AMNH 695201 , male, 6 June 1910, by Wilson ; AMNH 695202 , male, 8 June 1908, by Cole ; AMNH 695204 , female, 8 June 1908, by Cole ; Stawell , AMNH 695208 , female, 13 September 1908, collector ?.

W. Longmore (personal commun.) noted that suitable habitat for this form occurs north and west but not at Melton proper and that Melton, as a train stop, may represent only an approximate locality from which the holotype was collected.