Zosterops lateralis macmillani Mayr, 1937

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 : 32

Zosterops lateralis macmillani Mayr

Zosterops lateralis macmillani Mayr, 1937: 2 (Tanna, New Hebrides).

Now Zosterops lateralis macmillani Mayr, 1937 . See Mees, 1969: 97–100, Bregulla, 1992: 252, Dickinson, 2003: 629, and van Balen, 2008: 467– 468.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 330518 , adult male, collected at Whitesands (5 White Sands, as on label), ca. 19.31S, 169.26E, eastern Tanna Island , Vanuatu (5 New Hebrides), on 11 October 1935, by Lindsay Macmillan (no. 20), on the Whitney South Sea Expedition.

COMMENTS: Mayr gave the AMNH number of the holotype in the original description and measurements for seven male and seven female specimens. Only specimens from Macmillan’s 1935 collection were available when Mayr published macmillani, and there were, in fact, 16 specimens. The 15 paratypes are: males, AMNH 336870–336875 , Tanna ; AMNH 336876 , 336877 , Aniwa ; females, AMNH 336880–336884 , Tanna ; AMNH 336885 , 336886 , Aniwa. Whitesands was the British administrative headquarters during the period of the New Hebrides Condominium .

Mees (1969: 97–100) synonymized macmillani with vatensis but restricted the range of vatensis to the southern islands of Vanuatu and this was apparently followed by van Balen (2008: 467); Bregulla (1992: 252) listed the Tanna and Aniwa birds under Z. l. tropicus and omitted macmillani without comment. Dickinson (2003: 629) continued to recognize macmillani, and I agree with him. A check of the specimens in AMNH shows that the characters given by Mayr for macmillani are valid and, in addition, that the tarsus may be longer, heavier, and lighter in color.