Poecile lugubris persica Pražák

Poecile lugubris persica Pražák, 1895b: 81 .

NOW. Parus lugubris dubius Hellmayr, 1901 . See Vaurie (1959: 484) and Dickinson (2003: 527).

Holotype. NMW 33353 (Tschusi 5502), 3, collected by “Zarudny” [= Nikolaj Alekseevič Zarudnyj (1859– 1919)] on “ 26.XII.93 ” [= 7 January 1894 NS] at “Isarchun” [= Sarkhun, Iran; 31.75°N, 50.55°E].

Remarks. Pražák (1895b: 81) said that he studied 14 specimens of Parus lugubris from ‘Palestina’, ‘Syria’ and ‘Persia’, but based P. l. persica on specimens from ‘Persia’ alone (Pražák 1895b: 81–82). Only a single relevant tit was available to Pražák in the VTH in the early 1890s, which I consider the holotype of P. l. persica (no such tits were in the NHMW). The remaining specimens apparently existed only in Pražák’s mind. Vaurie (1950: 2) stated, without evidence, that Pražák (1895b) based his persica on “ Parus lugubris ?” of Blanford (1876: 229), but I found nothing in Pražák (1895b) in support of this claim.

Poecile lugubris persica Pražák, 1895b, is preoccupied in the genus Parus Linnaeus, 1758, by Parus persicus Blanford, 1873 = Parus caeruleus persicus Blanford, 1873 . Hellmayr (1901: 173) therefore replaced Pražák’s Poecile lugubris persica with Parus lugubris dubius Hellmayr, 1901 . The latter subspecies has the same holotype and the same type locality as Poecile lugubris persica Pražák (Art. 72.7 of the Code).