Microeca fascinans howei 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 : 238

Microeca fascinans howei Mathews

Microeca fascinans howei Mathews, 1913c: 8 (Kow Plains, Victoria).

Now Microeca fascinans assimilis Gould, 1841 . See Mayr, 1986d: 558, and Schodde and Mason, 1999: 378–379.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 604438 , adult female, collected at Sunset , Kow Plains, northwestern Victoria, Australia, on 6 September 1911, by F.E. Howe. From the Mathews Collection (no. 12670) via the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: Mathews received the single specimen from Howe, cataloged as number 12670, although Mathews did not give his catalog number in the original description. It bears Mathews and Rothschild type labels and Howe’s field label. Paratypes from the Victorian Mallee area are: AMNH 604532 and 604533 (Mathews nos. 15290 and 15291), males, Gerhamin (12 mi northwest of Sea Lake, 5 Nyarrin on modern maps), 15 September 1912, and AMNH 604534 (10084), female, Ouyen, 28 August 1911 (also a paratype of M. f. victoriae, see above), all collected by Tregellas. AMNH 604535, female, Underbool, 13 September 1910, by C.F. Cole, was collected early enough, but I did not find it in Mathews’ catalog. Whittell (1954: 158) noted that Cole sent ‘‘a large collection of bird-skins’’ to Mathews in 1914, so possibly Mathews had already published this name before he received Cole’s specimen.

Schodde and Mason (1999: 378–379) discussed the zone of intergradation between M. f. fascinans and M. f. assimilis in the Victorian Mallee. Most of these specimens, including the holotype, have the reduced white in the tail of assimilis , but AMNH 604532 has the white more extensive.

Kow Plains in western Victoria is 35 mi east of Pinnaroo, 35.18S, 140.54E (Times Atlas), South Australia.