Lophorina niedda, MAYR, 1930

Irestedt, Martin, Batalha-Filho, Henrique, Ericson Fls, Per G. P., Christidis, Les & Schodde, Richard, 2017, Phylogeny, biogeography and taxonomic consequences in a bird-of-paradise species complex, Lophorina-Ptiloris (Aves: Paradisaeidae), Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 181, pp. 439-470 : 463

LOPHORINA NIEDDA INOPINATA SUBSP. NOV.

Holotype: AMNH 294594 , ♀ adult, collected on 13 May 1928, by Ernst Mayr no. 602 – type locality: Siwi, Arfak Mountains , Vogelkop , West Papua.

Diagnosis: Female plumage dark-backed and black-headed with small, whitish post-ocular mark as in nominate niedda , but base tone to ventrum, under-wing coverts and axillars consistently pale greyish cream, without ochreish wash; male as in nominate niedda with narrow, curved attenuately tipped cape feathering and without black centre spots to central feather scales of breast shield; both sexes with moderately tapered tails, the central rectrices longest and usually> 10 mm longer than outermost in closed tail. Other diagnoses of this form are given by Mayr (1930), Gilliard (1969) and Cracraft (1992) under the name L. s. superba .

Range: mountains of the Doberai Peninsula, Vogelkop , West Papua, c. 1200–2000 m a.s.l.

Remarks: Because the type of Paradisea superba Pennant, 1781 is of the central cordillera and not Vogelkop species of Lophorina (see L. superba below), the Vogekop subspecies in the Doberai Peninsula lacks a name. Accordingly, we supply it with inopinata = unexpected, in accord with Articles 16.1, 16.4 and 72.3 of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, hereafter the Code ( ICZN, 1999).

The name furcata (Latham, 1 7 9 0), Index Ornithologicus 1: 196 (as Paradisea furcata ) could apply to this form but was based on a wingless male described with a black head lacking the metallic crown scaling found in all males of Lophorina , a deeply swallow-tailed breast shield, and cape tufts ‘somewhat like’ those of L. superba (see below). Its source locality was not recorded. Accordingly, furcata is treated here as both a nomen dubium and nomen oblitum. It does not appear to have been used as valid since the early decades of the 19th century (see synonymies under L. superba in Sharpe, 1877, 1891 –1898); and the type, originally in the Leverian Museum ( Latham, 1782), was lost with the auction of that large early collection in 1806 ( Donovan, 1806). It is missing from the only surviving bloc of Leverian avian material in the Naturhistorisches Museum, Wien ( Pelzeln, 1873).