Hypothymis azurea oberholseri Stresemann, 1913

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 : 189-190

Hypothymis azurea oberholseri Stresemann

Hypothymis azurea oberholseri Stresemann, 1913a: 295 ( Formosa).

Now Hypothymis azurea oberholseri Stresemann, 1913 . See MacKinnon and Phillipps, 2000: 284, and del Hoyo et al., 2006: 280–281.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 649844 , adult male, collected at Sharaikisha , Taiwan (5 Formosa), on 5 April 1907, by Alan Owston’s Japanese collectors. From the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: In the original description, Stresemann said that his type was a male bearing the above data and in the Rothschild Collection. AMNH 649844 is the only such male that came to AMNH with the Rothschild Collection. As is often the case, this specimen bears an Owston label in Japanese and a second one in English. The Japanese label bears the ‘‘O.C. no. 78’’, which has been marked out, and the number ‘‘40’’ is stamped on the label; the English bears ‘‘O.C. no. 40’’. In this case, the numbers are not unique to a particular specimen, as all of Owston’s 1907 specimens are marked in this way. The meaning of the ‘‘O.C. no.’’ is not clear; it may be a species number given by Owston, or it may refer to a particular collector. On Owston labels in general, numbers may not always have the same meaning.

Stresemann gave measurements for 29 male and 11 female specimens of his new taxon. Sixteen male specimens, marked with asterisks, were in BMNH and 13 males and 11 females, including the type, were in the Rothschild Collection. I have considered as paratypes 10 specimens that are sexed as males and are in adult male plumage and 10 specimens that are sexed as females and are in female plumage: males: AMNH 649845– 649850 , 649858 , 649861 , 649862 , and 649866 ; females: AMNH 649851–649857 , 649860 , 649864 , and 649865. Collecting localities include Sharaikisha, Kodensho, Taipeh, Tamsui, Tapposha, Takin, Bangkim Tsing, and ‘‘ southwestern Formosa’ ’. Four other specimens that were unsexed or in plumage that did not agree with the sex on the label were collected long before the description of oberholseri and would have been available to Stresemann. I have also considered them paratypes: AMNH 649859 , 649863 , 649867 and 649868 from Taipeh, Fungshan near Takau, and Patsuma .