Stipiturus malachurus media 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 : 114

[ Stipiturus malachurus media Mathews ]

Mathews (1919b: 45) described this form, now in the synonymy of Stipiturus malachurus westernensis Campbell, 1912 , and designated as type a specimen collected at Gnowangerup, 33.56S, 118.00E ( Johnstone and Storr, 2004: 507), Western Australia on 12 February 1919. In Mathews (1922e: 141), Tom Carter, who collected the specimens, said of media: ‘‘The type specimen of this Emu-Wren was obtained by me a few miles east of Gnowangerup (thirty miles south-east of Broome Hill) on 12th February 1919.’’ Four specimens from the Mathews collection, collected by Carter at Gnowangerup in February 1919, came to AMNH with the Rothschild Collection, but none was collect- ed on the 12th: AMNH 602978, male, 16 February; and AMNH 602979–602981, females, 13 February. None of them is marked to indicate type status, and Mathews did not catalog specimens as late as 1919. Therefore, it seems impossible to determine whether an error was made in transcribing the date or whether another specimen is the holotype and still exists.