Acanthagenys rufogularis augusta 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 : 164-165

Acanthagenys rufogularis augusta Mathews

Acanthagenys rufogularis augusta Mathews, 1923b: 39 (Port Augusta, South Australia).

Now Acanthagenys rufogularis (Gould, 1838) . See Salomonsen, 1967: 445, Schodde and Mason, 1999: 295–296, Christidis and Boles, 2008: 185– 191, and Higgins et al., 2008: 618–619.

SYNTYPES: AMNH 696495 ( Mathews no. 15180), sex? [♀ pencilled in], collected 30 miles southwest of Port Augusta, 32.30S, 137.46E ( USBGN, 1957), on 24 August 1912, by S.A. White (no. 852) ; AMNH 696496 (9984), male, collected northwest of Port Augusta , on 7 October 1911, by S.A. White (no. 213) ; AMNH 696497 (9986), male immature, collected northwest of Port Augusta , on 4 October 1911, by S.A. White (no. 212) ; AMNH 696498 (9985), female immature, collected northwest of Port Augusta , on 4 October 1911, by S.A. White (no. 211). All from the Mathews Collection via the Rothschild Collection .

COMMENTS: Sometime between 1913 and 1925, Mathews (1925a: 95), having found that Cotten, in 1848, had named the Victorian bird A. r. rodorhynchus , considered his name A. rufogularis cygnus , type locality Swan Island, Victoria, a synonym. In the original description of augusta, Mathews (1923b: 39) said that augusta differed ‘‘from A. r. rodorhynchus (Cotten) in being paler in general coloration and smaller in its measurements,’’ and the type was said to be from Port Augusta; Later, he ( Mathews, 1925a: 95) said that ‘‘according to Captain White the birds vary from Victoria to South Australia, and the Port Augusta form I named Acanthogenys [sic] rufogularis augusta.’’

Apparently, this can be traced to a misreading by Mathews of White’s (1918: 24) statement concerning the birds he observed and collected from Lake Victoria, barely within the state of New South Wales, and down the Murray River, to Morgan in South Australia. White commented that the ‘‘rufous coloration on the throat seemed to be much paler in comparison with birds from further north.’’ Port Augusta is indeed northwest of the area covered by White, but White is saying that the Murray River birds are paler than the more northern birds, whereas, Mathews in his description is saying that it is the Port Augusta birds that are paler!

In his reports on his 1911 and 1912 Port Augusta trips, White (1912: 125, 1913c: 32) did not enumerate his specimens but indicat- ed that the species was plentiful. The above four Mathews specimens in AMNH collected by White in the vicinity of Port Augusta in 1911 and 1912 are here considered syntypes of augusta; even though none of them has any indication that it was to have type status, Mathews’ collection was complete long before the 1923 description of augusta. They had not been included in the AMNH type collection previously. The three syntypes of augusta that were collected in 1911 are also paratypes of Acanthagenys rufogularis cygnus Mathews (see above). I have not considered as syntypes of augusta four specimens collected in the Gawler Range on the 1912 expedition. There are no S.A. White specimens from the Port Augusta area in SAMA (P. Horton, personal commun.).

AMNH 696495 bears, in addition to White’s original label and a Rothschild Museum label printed ‘‘ Ex. coll. G.M. Mathews,’’ a ‘‘ Figured’ ’ label, indicating that it was illustrated in Mathews (1925a, pl. 553, opp. p. 88, text p. 89) where it is described only as an adult and is not said to be a type ; ‘‘ ♀ ’’ has been added to White’s label in pencil. Both figures in the plate are labeled ‘‘ ♀ ’’ and the subspecies is not indicated, although from the verbal description it appears that augusta is illustrated in the upper figure and A. r. queenslandicus in the lower figure. The immature female specimen was also described, but not figured, in Mathews (1925a: 90).