Phylidonyris pyrrhoptera rex Mathews

Mary, 2011, Type Specimens Of Birds In The American Museum Of Natural History Part 9. Passeriformes: Zosteropidae And Meliphagidae, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2011 (348), pp. 1-193 : 141

Phylidonyris pyrrhoptera rex Mathews

Phylidonyris pyrrhoptera rex Mathews, 1925a: 7 (King Island, Bass Straits).

Now Phylidonyris pyrrhoptera pyrrhoptera (Latham, 1801) . See Salomonsen, 1967: 427, Schodde and Mason, 1999: 309–310, Christidis and Boles, 2008: 185–191, and Higgins et al., 2008: 666–667.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 692028 , adult male, collected on King Island , 39.50S, 144.00E ( USBGN, 1957), Bass Strait, Tasmania, Australia, on 30 April 1914, by Thomas Tregellas. From the Mathews Collection via the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: Mathews (1925a: 7) described the adult male of Phylidonyris pyrrhoptera , giving measurements and date and place of collection, and noted that the specimen figured and described was the type of ‘‘ rex subsp nov.’’ AMNH 692028 is the only male King Island specimen from the Mathews Collection, and the soft parts colors and date of collection given in Mathews (1925a: 7) are the same as those on Tregellas’ label. The measurements, written on Tregellas’ label by Mathews, correspond to the measurements given in the description except that Mathews listed both the culmen and the tarsus as 17 mm, whereas, the culmen is listed on the label as 21 mm, undoubtedly a lapsus in the publication. The reverse of the Rothschild label has ‘‘figured,’’ apparently written by Hartert; this refers to Mathews (1925a: pl. 543, lower fig., opp. p. 6, text p. 7). The specimen has neither a Mathews nor a Rothschild type label, but does bear an AMNH type label, filled in by Charles Vaurie, probably when Finn Salomonsen was at AMNH working on the Meliphagidae . There is no doubt that it is the holotype. The Tregellas label has an ‘‘A’’ on the reverse. There is one paratype: AMNH 692029, female, collected on King Island on 4 May 1914 by Tregellas, whose label has a ‘‘B’’ on the reverse and a note: ‘‘The companion of A. who was previously secured.’’ Both of these labels bear the number ‘‘797,’’ referring to the number of this species in Mathews (1908).

Salomonsen (1967: 427) recognized rex; Schodde and Mason (1999: 309–310) and Higgins et al. (2008: 666) included it in the nominate race. For use of 1801 as the date of publication for Latham’s Supplementum Indicis Ornithologici, see Schodde et al. (2010).