Seisura inquieta nea 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 : 214-215

Seisura inquieta nea Mathews

Seisura inquieta nea Mathews, 1912a: 323 (Queensland).

Now Myiagra inquieta (Latham, 1801) . See Watson et al., 1986c: 526, and Schodde and Mason, 1999: 518–520.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 653723 , adult female, collected at Coomooboolaroo , 23.53S, 149.34E ( USBGN, 1957b), Dawson River , Queensland, Australia, on 19 October 1908. From the Mathews Collection (no. 1863) via the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: Mathews cited his catalog number of the holotype in the original description, but there is no information there on the identity of the collector, whose label bears the numbers ‘‘141’’ and ‘‘493’’, with the latter the number of this species in Mathews (1908a). Mathews gave as the range of nea ‘‘ Queensland and Northern Territory (Alexandra)’’. Three specimens, collected by Stalk- er in Queensland and ‘‘ Northern Territory’ ’ and entered in Mathews’ catalog at the same time, are paratypes: AMNH 653682 (Mathews no. 1862), female collected in Northern Territory, Australia, in May, wing 106 (left wing) ; AMNH 653683 (1855), male collected at Alexandria Springs on 30 October 1905, wing 102 ; and AMNH 653724 (1868), unsexed, collected at Inkerman in 1907, wing 99. The only other Mathews specimen in AMNH from those two states and collected early enough to have served as a paratype is AMNH 653722 (14580), from Gracemere , collected 19 May 1881 ; however, it was not cataloged until November 1912, after the publication date of the name in January 1912. Mathews (1913a: 189) specified the type locality of nea as the Dawson River , the collecting locality of his holotype .

Schodde and Mason (1999: 518–520) considered Myiagra inquieta and Myiagra nana allospecies of a superspecies; other recent authors, including Watson et al. (1986c: 526), have considered them conspecific. Careful attention was given to the Stalker specimens for, according to the range maps in Schodde and Mason (1999: 518), the Alexandria specimens should be M. nana and the Inkerman specimen M. inquieta . Howev- er, their wing lengths as well as bill size and subtle color differences place all three definitely in M. inquieta . All of the evidence points to the locality data being incorrect for the two ‘‘Northern Territory’’ specimens.

Ingram (1907: 404–405) reported on Stalker’s Alexandria, Northern Territory, collection and listed these two specimens as Sisura (sic) nana , with both bearing the number ‘‘31’’. AMNH 653683 has a Stalker printed label with information written in his hand. AMNH 653682 has an oval cardboard label with the name Seisura inquieta written in a very different hand from the remaining data, which appear to be in Stalker’s hand. ‘‘Alexandria’’ and ‘‘ 31 May 1905 ’’, which appear on the Rothschild label for this specimen, were probably taken from Ingram’s article. It appears impossible at this late date to trace the origin of the discrepancy between the locality data and the identification of the specimens. In his report on Stalker’s Inkerman collection, Ingram (1908: 469) listed a single adult specimen, now AMNH 653724, as Sisura (sic) inquieta .