Strepera versicolor fusca Ashby et al.

Strepera fusca Ashby et al., (in Anonymous) 1905a: 27 (Yorke’s Peninsula and Eyre’s Peninsula in South Australia).

Now Strepera versicolor intermedia Sharpe, 1877. See Amadon, 1951: 31; 1962b: 172; Schodde and Mason, 1999: 557–560; Blaylock and Horton, 2006: 288–290; and Russell and Rowley, 2009: 341–342.

SYNTYPE: AMNH 673738, sex?, collected at Edithburgh, 35.05S, 137.44E (Times Atlas), Yorke Peninsula, South Australia, Australia, in October 1886, by Edwin Ashby (no. 91). From the Mathews Collection (no. 3740) via the Rothschild Collection.

COMMENTS: The unbelievably complicated details of the description of fusca, which arises from uncertainty over when the name was introduced and by whom, have been carefully worked out by Blaylock and Horton (2006), and their conclusions, with which I concur, are summarized here. They found that the name was introduced at a meeting of the South Australian Ornithological Association on 12 May 1905 and availably published in the minutes of that meeting. There it was said that ‘‘birds from Yorke’s Peninsula and Eyre’s Peninsula in South Australia were found to be of a darker brown, with a very great amount of white on the wing, and it was considered that these birds were not Strepera melanoptera nor yet Strepera plumbea, and it was suggested to designate them Strepera fusca.’’ By referring to those minutes, Blaylock and Horton determined that there were seven members present and that all seven must be considered the authors of the name; in alphabetical order they are: E. Ashby, J.W. Mellor, A.M. Morgan, F.E. Storr, M. Symonds Clark, A.H.C. Zietz, and F.R. Zeitz. Mathews (1912a: 445) was correct in citing the description as stemming from the minutes of the meeting, but not in citing Ashby as the only author. Ashby’s was the only specimen of the original series that came to the Mathews Collection, and Ashby had written ‘‘suggested name Strepera fusca ’’ on his label. As pointed out by Blaylock and Horton, all the specimens examined at the 1905 meeting are syntypes of fusca, but they were able to locate only the above specimen and a second syntype, SAMA B54309 (S.A. White Collection), male, collected at ‘‘Kapinka,’’ Stokes, Eyre Peninsula, by S.A. and H.M. White, 4 October 1899.

Mathews (1912a: 445) further confused the matter by not including Yorke Peninsula in the range of fusca, even though he had the Ashby specimen at that time, and by indicating on his type label that Mellor was the author. Mellor (1910: 34–35) had indeed introduced the same name in 1910, apparently thinking that it had not been validly described earlier, but with partly different type specimens. As shown by Blaylock and Horton (2006: 288), this name is a junior subjective synonym and a junior primary homonym of Strepera fusca Ashby et al., and is permanently invalid (ICZN 1999: 65, 59, Arts. 61.3.1 and 57.2).

There are no additional specimens from Yorke Peninsula in AMNH, and Eyre Peninsula specimens (in AMNH via Mathews) were collected in 1911, after the publication of fusca.