Acanthiza pusilla venus 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 : 153

Acanthiza pusilla venus Mathews

Acanthiza pusilla venus Mathews, 1912a: 348 (Venus Bay, South Australia).

Now Acanthiza apicalis apicalis Gould, 1847 . See Schodde and Mason, 1999: 201–203.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 600568 , adult male, collected at Venus Bay , 33.11S. 134.39E ( USBGN, 1957b), South Australia, Australia, on 10 February 1910, by Edwin Ashby (no. 192). From the Mathews Collection (no. 6201) via the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: Mathews cited his catalog number of the holotype in the original description. In addition to Ashby’s label, the specimen bears both Mathews and Rothschild type labels. Paratype AMNH 600569, unsexed, collected at Venus Bay on the same day by Ashby, was cataloged by Mathews as number 9455 in October 1911 and would have been in his hand before the description was published. The number ‘‘566’’ on Ashby’s label refers to the number of Acanthiza pusilla in Mathews (1908a). There is an additional paratype in SAMA (P. Horton and B. Blaylock, personal commun.).

As in the previous two taxa, Mayr (1986b: 435) synonymized venus with A. apicalis albiventris ; however, the type seems to agree most closely with A. apicalis apicalis , as indicated by Schodde and Mason (1999: 201–203).