Conopoderas caffra consobrina Murphy and Mathews

LeCroy, M., 2008, Type Specimens Of Birds In The American Museum Of Natural History. Part 7. Passeriformes: Sylviidae, Muscicapidae, Platysteiridae, Maluridae, Acanthizidae, Monarchidae, Rhipiduridae, And Petroicidae, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 313 (1), pp. 1-287 : 30

Conopoderas caffra consobrina Murphy and Mathews

Conopoderas caffra consobrina Murphy and Mathews, 1928: 13 (Motane Island, Marquesas Group).

Acrocephalus mendanae consobrina ( Murphy and Mathews, 1928) . See Watson et al., 1986a: 71, del Hoyo et al., 2006: 630, Cibois et al., 2007: 1161, and Cibois et al., 2008.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 195481 , adult male, collected on Mohotane (5 Motane) Island, 10.00S, 140.33W (Times Atlas), Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia, on 22 November 1922, by Rollo H. Beck on the Whitney South Sea Expedition (no. 6445).

COMMENTS: The AMNH number of the holotype was given in the original description. Murphy and Mathews based their description on ‘‘specimens from Motane collected in November 1922.’’ The following are paratypes: AMNH 195474–195480 , 195482– 195495 , 195529 , 195530 , and 199965. AMNH 195474 , 195493 , and 199965 were exchanged with the Rothschild Collection and, when that collection was purchased by AMNH, were recataloged as AMNH 594910 , 594912 , and 594911, respectively ; AMNH 195480 was exchanged with ZMB in July 1936. AMNH 195478 , 195479 , 195486 , 195491 , and 195494 are not now in AMNH and may have been exchanged with other institutions, although the catalog was not so marked .

Recent mtDNA studies by Cibois et al. (2007) indicated that Acrocephalus populations in the Marquesas are polyphyletic. Their proposed classification included populations from the southern Marquesas in the species A. mendanae ; Cibois et al. (2008) extended their study to include Acrocephalus populations in the Society Islands.

Dickinson (2003: 585) listed consobrinus as a subspecies of A. caffer and referenced other treatments. He (Dickinson, corrigenda 2.1 for 2003: 585) then noted that the subspecific name consobrina is invariable and retains the spelling of the original description (ICZN, 1999: 38, Art. 31.2.1, and 1999: 44, Art. 34.2.1). In Latin, consobrina means ‘‘female cousin’’; as a noun in apposition, it is therefore invariable.