Chlorocharis emiliae Sharpe, 1888

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 : 39-40

Chlorocharis emiliae Sharpe

Chlorocharis emiliae Sharpe, 1888a: 392 (Kina Balu, Northern Borneo).

Now Chlorocharis emiliae emiliae Sharpe, 1888 . See Mees, 1969: 212–217, Smythies, 2000: 597– 598, and van Balen, 2008: 483–484.

LECTOTYPE: AMNH 701481 , female, collected on Mount Kinabalu , 8000 ft, 06.03N, 116.32E (Times Atlas), Sabah, Malaysia, on 27 February 1888, by John Whitehead (no. 2077). From the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: In the original description, Sharpe did not designate a type but had two specimens for which he listed Whitehead’s numbers 2077 and 2079. Hartert (1920: 437) listed as the type of emiliae Whitehead’s specimen no. 2077, thereby designating it the lectotype; it bears a Rothschild type label. Whitehead’s label on this specimen was marked ‘‘Type RBS[harpe]’’ by Sharpe. This is one of the cases where Whitehead sent ahead to Sharpe ‘‘a pair of most birds I thought would be new’’ ( Whitehead, 1893: 185). Because Sharpe described both male and female, no. 2079 must be a male, but no other information was given; specimen 2079 did not come to AMNH.

When Sharpe (1889: 63) published his account of the birds of northern Borneo collected by Whitehead on all of his trips there, he listed four specimens of emiliae , all collected 28 January–1 March 1888 and labeled a–d. Because Sharpe did not list Whitehead’s numbers, matching these specimens with the seven now in AMNH is not possible ; some of the dates match and some do not. However, only the two specimens listed in the original description comprise the type series of emiliae , and number 2079, if found, would be the paralectotype.

The genus Chlorocharis was described by Sharpe (1888a: 392, pl. XI, fig. 1) at this time, with the type species Chlorocharis emiliae .