Uraeginthus bengalus littoralis van Someren

Uraeginthus bengalus littloralis van Someren, 1922: 160 (Mombassa) .

Now Uraeginthus bengalus brunneigularis Mearns, 1911 . See Hartert, 1928: 195; Mayr et al., 1968: 334; Dickinson, 2003: 729; Fry and Keith, 2004: 327–329; and Payne, 2010: 327.

LECTOTYPE: AMNH 452018, female, collected at Mombasa, 04.04S, 39.40E (Times atlas), Kenya, on 10 May 1918. From the

V.G.L. van Someren Collection via the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: In the original description, van Someren did not designate a type specimen, only indicating that the type was from Mombasa. Hartert (1928: 195) listed the type as a van Someren specimen collected at Mombasa on 10 May 1918, thereby designating it the lectotype. It is labeled littoralis by van Someren on the reverse of his label. Only this specimen from Mombasa is in AMNH, and no specimens from Lamu or M’koi, the other two localities mentioned in the original description, came to AMNH with the Rothschild Collection.

Hartert (1928: 195) called attention to the earlier mention of this form in van Someren (1918a: 258), where there is a description but no name is applied. There van Someren said that he had five male and three female specimens collected at Manda, Mombassa, and Lamu. This earlier report was based on specimens collected by Allen Turner in ‘‘April’’ 1916 and the entire collection ‘‘with the exception of the European migrants and a few examples of African species’’ had been placed in the museum of the East Africa and Uganda Natural History Society.

Mayr et al. (1968: 334) and Dickinson (2003: 729) recognized littoralis, Fry and Keith (2004: 327–329) and Payne (2010: 327) synonymized it with brunneigularis.