Formicivora pileata

LECROY, MARY & SLOSS, RICHARD, 2000, Type Specimens Of Birds In The American Museum Of Natural History. Part 3. Passeriformes: Eurylaimidae, Dendrocolaptidae, Furnariidae, Formicariidae, Conopophagidae, And Rhinocryptidae, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2000 (257), pp. 1-88 : 47

[ Formicivora pileata ]

COMMENTS: AMNH 5381 has been included in the type collection but was not listed as a Wied type by Allen (1889b). The original Wied label has the following: Formicivora pileata W .; Herpsilochmus pileatus Sc[later]; Myiothera pileata Licht. ; Ƌ; Brasilien, M.R.

In the AMNH catalog, no. 5381 is blank and marked “void!”. However, this is apparently a lapsus on the part of the cataloger, because the specimen has this number attached to a leg on a separate small tag, as do all of the Wied specimens.

Wied (1831: 1078) listed this species as Myiothera pileata Lichtenstein, 1823 . Ménétriés (1835: 485) shifted it into the genus Formicivora because Wied had told him that its behavior was more like other members of that genus. As noted above, Wied had written “ Formicivora pileata W.” on the label, but this may have been written subsequent to Ménétriés’s paper and, in any case, was never proposed as a new taxon. Therefore, AMNH 5381 has no standing as a type. See Whitney et al. (in press) for additional information on this taxon.