Neositta chrysoptera lathami Mathews

Pachycephalidae, Aegithalidae, Remizidae, Paridae, Sittidae, Neosittidae, Certhiidae, Rhabdornithidae, Climacteridae, Dicaeidae, Pardalotidae, Nectariniidae, And & Lecroy, Mary, 2010, Type Specimens Of Birds In The American Museum Of Natural History Part 8. Passeriformes:, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2010 (333), pp. 1-178 : 86-87

Neositta chrysoptera lathami Mathews

Neositta chrysoptera lathami Mathews, 1912a: 379 (Victoria) .

Now Daphoenositta chrysoptera pileata X D. c. chrysoptera . See Mayr, 1950: 284, Schodde and Mason, 1999: 428–430, and Noske, 2007a: 640– 641.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 684197 , adult male, collected at Parwan , 37.42S, 144.28E ( USBGN, 1957), about 2 miles east of Bacchus Marsh, Victoria, Australia, on 20 May 1910, by Thomas H. Tregellas (no. 286). From the Mathews Collection (no. 5106) via the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: Mathews cited his catalog number of the holotype in the original description. The specimen bears, in addition to Tregellas’ label, a Mathews Collection label (the no. ‘‘694’’ on this label refers to the number of this species in Mathews, 1908), a Mathews type label, and a Mathews ‘‘Figured’’ label, indicating that it was illustrated in Mathews (1923b: pl. 496, bottom, opp. p. 55, text p. 56), where it is confirmed as the type of lathami. An AMNH type label has been added. The following Victoria specimens were cataloged by Mathews as N. chrysoptera before publication of lathami and are paratypes: collected by Tregellas, AMNH 684192 (Mathews no. 5107), female, Ringwood, 12 March 1910; AMNH 684193 (8082), male, Olinda, 25 December 1910; AMNH 684194 (5955), male, Olinda, 3 June 1907; AMNH 684195 (8081), female, Olinda, 25 December 1910; collected by F.E. Howe, AMNH 684198 (4540), male, Parwan, 25 July 1909; collected by Tregellas, AMNH 684211 (5954), male, Mitcham, 6 August 1910; collected by L.G. Chandler, AMNH 684212 (4949), male, Mornington, 12 April, 1909. Two additional specimens, AMNH 684200 and 684201, male and female, were collected at Melton on 6 June 1910 by Chandler, but I did not find them cataloged by Mathews.

Mathews included all of Victoria in the range of lathami, however, the holotype is from the zone of introgression between N. c. pileata and N. c. chrysoptera in central Victoria. Schodde and Mason (1999: 428, 430) show this and discuss it. Mayr (1950: 284) recognized lathami, but ‘‘emphasized that all of its characters (reduction of streaking, blacker crown) indicate introgressive gene flow from pileata .’’ Noske (2007a: 640) synonymized lathami with nominate chrysoptera .