Cassicus (sic) vitellinus Lawrence, 1864

LeCroy, Mary, 2013, Type Specimens Of Birds In The American Museum Of Natural History Part 11. Passeriformes: Parulidae, Drepanididae, Vireonidae, Icteridae, Fringillinae, Carduelinae, Estrildidae, And Viduinae, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2013 (381), pp. 1-155 : 44-45

Cassicus (sic) vitellinus Lawrence

Cassicus (sic) vitellinus Lawrence, 1864: 107 ( New Granada, Isthmus of Panama).

Now Cacicus cela vitellinus ( Lawrence, 1864) . See Hellmayr, 1937: 28–29; Blake, 1968: 144; Wetmore et al., 1984: 346–349; Dickerman, 2003: 769; and Fraga, 2011: 749–750.

SYNTYPES: AMNH 41901, male, and AMNH 41902, female, collected in New Granada, Isthmus of Panama, in the ‘‘winter’’ of 1860–1861, by James McLeannan and John R. Galbraith. From the George N. Lawrence Collection.

COMMENTS: When Lawrence (1861a: 297) first received the the first of these specimens, he misidentified it as Cassiculus icteronotus Vieillot, 1816 , but without giving any details. Later, after receiving a second specimen he realized his mistake, and named Cassicus vitellinus , describing both male and female but without specifying the number of specimens he had. The wing and tail measurements published with his description of the male and female are the same as those written on the labels of the syntypes, and both are marked ‘‘Type’’ by Lawrence . Apparently, the female syntype is the specimen that Lawrence had originally, as it bears one label marked ‘‘ Cassicus icteronotus ’’ in Lawrence’s hand, with a second label marked ‘‘ Cassicus vitellinus ’’ and ‘‘Type’’ by Lawrence . It is possible for Lawrence to have received this specimen from the joint collectors prior to his publication of Part 1 of his catalog in January 1861, as their collecting was done in the ‘‘winter’’ of 1860–1861.

There are two additional, undated, specimens of this form from the Lawrence Collection, collected by McLeannan. McLeannan collected alone both before and after his joint collecting with Galbraith, and these two specimens, AMNH 41903 and 41904, were probably collected later, as both have labels bearing only the name C. vitellinus . They are not marked ‘‘ Type.’’

Fraga (2011: 749) suggested that subspecies vitellinus and flavicrissus may represent a species separate from C. cela based on differences in plumage color and voice, but retained them in the one species.