Alseonax poensis Alexander

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 : 85-86

Alseonax poensis Alexander

Alseonax poensis Alexander, 1903c: 17 (Bakaki and Moka, Fernando Po).

Now Muscicapa adusta poensis (Alexander, 1903) . See Watson et al., 1986b: 327, Urban et al., 1997: 477, and del Hoyo et al., 2006: 122.

Syntype: AMNH 604117, adult female, collected at Moka, Bioko (5 Fernando Po), on 9 December 1902, by José Lopes for Boyd Alexander. From the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: In the original description, Alexander did not name a type or say how many specimens he had; however, earlier he ( Alexander, 1903b: 383) had reported on his collection as a whole and had there listed this form as Alseonax obscura , saying that he had collected a male specimen at Bakaki and that his collector had obtained two males and five females at Moka in December. AMNH 604117 is one of those specimens, although it had not been previously included in the AMNH type collection. Other syntypes are in BMNH ( Warren and Harrison, 1971: 440).

Urban et al. (1997: 477) synonymized the subspecies poensis , albiventris , kumboensis, and okuensis with Muscicapa adusta obscura ; Grote (1936: 375) had pointed out that when A. obscura is included in Muscicapa , it is preoccupied by Muscicapa obscura C.L. Brehm, 1823 , and provided M. a. sjöstedti as a replacement name. However, in the combination used by Urban et al. (1997: 477), poensis is the next available name for the taxa considered synonyms and no nomen novum is required.