Artamus florenciae Ingram

Artamus florenciae Ingram, 1906: 115 (Alexandria).

Now Artamus cinereus melanops Gould, 1865. See Hellmayr, 1916: 100–101; Mathews, 1923b: 244– 255; 1930: 637; Mayr, 1962b: 164; Schodde and Mason, 1999: 565–567; Dickinson, 2003: 464; and Rowley and Russell, 2009b: 307.

SYNTYPES: AMNH 664998 (Mathews no. 2457), female, July 1905, AMNH 664999 (2459), female, April 1905, AMNH 665000 (2460), sex?, undated, all collected at Alexandria, Northern Territory, Australia, by Wilfred Stalker. From the Mathews Collection via the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: The specimens involved in the description of A. florenciae were collected by Stalker for Sir William Ingram, whose son, Collingwood Ingram (1906, 1907, and 1909) wrote up the Alexandria collection. Mathews purchased this collection from Ingram, with the types going to Rothschild.

As in the case of A. gracilis above, Hartert appears to have tied the Rothschild type label on the wrong bird. When C. Ingram described florenciae in 1906, he did not designate a type or enumerate his specimens. In 1907, he (Ingram, 1907: 409) listed his specimens as an adult female collected in April 1905 (now AMNH 664999), an adult female collected in July 1905 (now AMNH 664998), and a female without date (now AMNH 665000). At the same time, he noted that his descriptions in 1906 were based on specimens sent by Stalker in his first shipment. There is no indication of shipment number on any of these three specimens, and therefore it seems necessary to consider that all three are syntypes. On all three the Rothschild label is printed ‘‘Ex. Coll. G.M. Mathews,’’ and AMNH 664998 and AMNH 664999 had been marked ‘‘Type’’ by Mathews. In addition AMNH 664999 bears a Rothschild type label filled in by hand unknown. The number ‘‘632’’ on these two specimens refers to the number of this species in Mathews’ (1908) ‘‘Hand-list.’’

The much-delayed third shipment of Alexandria specimens from Stalker came much later and is reported on separately by Ingram (1909), where on page 617 he listed two male specimens of florenciae collected in March 1906 (although one is labeled 30 April 1906). These specimens cannot have type status, although it is AMNH 665001, male, 20 March 1906, from the upper Playford River that bears a Rothschild type label, is the specimen listed by Hartert (1920: 455) as the type of florenciae, and must be the specimen that Mathews, prior to cataloging it, had exchanged to Rothschild as the type. There is no label indicating that it had been part of the Mathews Collection. AMNH 665001 was cataloged as the type of florenciae at AMNH and has always been so accepted; therefore this specimen remains in the type collection with an added label explaining that it is not the type.

The other male, AMNH 664997, collected on 30 April 1906 had been in the Mathews Collection and was cataloged by him as no. 2458. It also has no type standing.