Microeca fascinans victoriae 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 : 237

Microeca fascinans victoriae Mathews

Microeca fascinans victoriae Mathews, 1912a: 302 (Victoria).

Now Microeca fascinans fascinans (Latham, 1801) . See Mayr, 1986d: 558, Schodde, 1992, and Schodde and Mason, 1999: 378–379.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 604405 , adult male, collected at Parwan , ca. 2 mi east of Bacchus Marsh, 38.45S, 144.30E (Times Atlas), Victoria, Australia, on 25 May 1909, by F.E. Howe. From the Mathews Collection via the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: Mathews cited his catalog number of the holotype in the original description, giving the type locality as ‘‘Victoria’’ and including South Australia in the range. Later, Mathews (1913a: 166) listed victoriae as a synonym of M. f. fascinans and there specified the type locality as Parwan, the collecting locality of the holotype. In addition to the Mathews and Rothschild type labels, the holotype bears Howe’s original field label ; the number ‘‘433’’ appearing there refers to the number of this species in Mathews (1908a).

The following specimens from Victoria are paratypes: AMNH 604394 (Mathews no. 6250), male, Ringwood, 30 July 1910, by Howe; AMNH 604396 (8549), female, Olinda, 11 February 1911, by T.H. Tregellas; and AMNH 604399 (8658), female, Ringwood, 18 March 1911, by Tregellas. Four additional specimens collected by Tregellas in 1911 and cataloged on 5 January 1912 are probable paratypes: AMNH 604395 (10085), male, Olinda, 15 April 1911; AMNH 604396 (10086), male, Selby, 30 July 1911; AMNH 604397 (10087), female, Selby, 30 July 1911; and AMNH 604534 (10084), female, Ouyen, 28 August 1911. This last specimen is also a paratype of M. f. howei (see below) and is identifiable with M. f. assimilis Gould. The following are possible paratypes of victoriae, although I did not find them in Mathews’ catalog: AMNH 604400, female, Ringwood, 19 September 1908, by L.G. Chandler; AMNH 604401, female, Frankston, April 1908, by Chandler; and AMNH 604402, unsexed, Frankston, 12 March 1909, by Tregellas. I did not find any South Australian specimens from the Mathews Collection taken early enough to be included in the type series.

Schodde (1992) discussed Latham’s names Sylvia leucophaea and Loxia fascinans and the paintings on which they are based. As the original specimens are presumably no longer in existence, Schodde stabilized the nomenclature by designating the same specimen as the neotype of both names and followed Gould, as first reviser, in using fascinans as the applicable name.