Ptilopus (Leucotreron) alligator Collett 1898
Creators
- 1. Natural History Museum, University of Oslo, PO Box 1172 Blindern, NO- 0318 Oslo, Norway
- 2. Natural History Museum, University of Oslo, PO Box 1172 Blindern, NO- 0318 Oslo, Norway & j. t. lifjeld @ nhm. uio. no; https: // orcid. org / 0000 - 0002 - 9172 - 9985
Description
Ptilopus (Leucotreron) alligator Collett, 1898
Proceedings of the General Meetings for Scientific Business of the Zoological Society of London, 1898 (3): 354–355.
Current name: Ptilinopus alligator Collett, 1898
Syntype NHMO-BI-77948; Mounted; Ad. M; Knut Dahl (1247), 15 June 1895; Australia: South Alligator River; 13.515° S 132.505° E; 8b.
Remarks: Collett (1898) based the original description on two birds, a male and a female collected by Knut Dahl, without specifying any one of them as the holotype. The other specimen was sent to the BMNH (Sharpe 1906; Warren 1966), where it is currently catalogued as NHMUK 1898.10.10.2 (Natural History Museum 2014b; Hein van Grouw, pers. comm.). Based on a list of specimens collected by Dahl during his Australia expedition (unpublished), it is evident that the original collector’s number of the NHMUK specimen must be 1248.
The original label, written by the collector, is present at the base of the stand (Figure 2b). The species is also here referred to simply as ‘Columba’.
Collett placed this new taxon in the subgenus Leucotreron and used the spelling Ptilopus for the genus, while the original spelling was Ptilinopus (Swainson 1825). The form Ptilopus was apparently introduced by Strickland (1841: p. 36), posing the question ‘Should not Ptilonopus [sic] be written Ptilopus ? ’, and in the period to follow this seemed to be the favoured spelling of the genus (e.g. Bonaparte 1857; Rowley 1877; Elliot 1878). Currently the original spelling is again used by all the major taxonomic lists, including the IOC World Bird List (Gill et al. 2022), and Leucotreron is no longer recognized as a subgenus. According to the Code (International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature 1999) these changes in the spelling of the genus name (Article 51.3.1) and rank (Article 51.3.2) do not warrant use of parentheses around the original author name.
For the NHMUK specimen, slightly different coordinates are provided for the South Alligator River locality (Warren 1966; Schodde & Mason 1997; Natural History Museum 2014b); 13° 30`S, 132° 50`E = 13.500° S 132.833° E, i.e. ca. 29 km further east than those provided above. While the location provided in the current publication is based on a detailed study of the travelogue of the collector (Dahl 1898; 1926), as well as his field diaries and letters to Collett, it has not been possible to find any documented source of the coordinates given in the NHMUK records. It is therefore assumed that they are added simply on the basis of the rather wide-ranging locality name (no coordinates are present, neither in the register book nor on any of the labels of the specimen; Hein van Grouw, pers. comm.). As Dahl in a letter to Collett stated that they had been travelling in the mountains between the Mary and South Alligator Rivers, we consider the coordinates presented here to be the more likely of the two sets (though still subject to the cautionary note provided in the Format section above).
Notes
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Linked records
Additional details
Identifiers
Biodiversity
- Event date
- 1895-06-15
- Family
- Curculionidae
- Genus
- Ptilopus
- Kingdom
- Animalia
- Order
- Coleoptera
- Phylum
- Arthropoda
- Scientific name authorship
- Collett
- Species
- alligator
- Taxon rank
- species
- Type status
- syntype
- Verbatim event date
- 1895-06-15
- Taxonomic concept label
- Ptilopus (Leucotreron) alligator Collett, 1898 sec. Johannessen & Lifjeld, 2022
References
- Collett, R. (1898) On some pigeons and parrots from North and Northwest Australia. Proceedings of the General Meetings for Scientific Business of the Zoological Society of London, 1898, 353 - 357. https: // doi. org / 10.1111 / j. 1096 - 3642.1898. tb 03152. x
- Sharpe, R. B. (1906) 3. Birds. In: The history of the collections contained in the Natural History Departments of the British Museum. Vol. II. Separate historical accounts of the several collections included in the Department of Zoology. Trustees of the British Museum, London, pp. 79 - 515.
- Warren, R. L. M. (1966) Type-specimens of birds in the British Museum (Natural History). Vol. 1. Non-Passerines. Trustees of the British Museum, London, 320 pp.
- Natural History Museum (2014 b) Dataset: Collection specimens. Resource: Specimens. Specimen 1898.10. 10.2, Natural History Museum Data Portal (data. nhm. ac. uk). Available from: https: // data. nhm. ac. uk / object / 74 fe 774 f- 0 f 7 c- 4784 - 9213 - 49 d 4 606968 f 7 / 1642550400000 (accessed 14 March 2022)
- Swainson, W. (1825) On the characters and natural affinities of several new birds from Australasia; including some observations on the Columbidae. The Zoological Journal, 1 (4), 463 - 484.
- Strickland, H. E. (1841) Commentary on Mr. G. R. Gray's ' Genera of birds, ' 1840. The Annals and Magazine of Natural History, Series 1, 7 (41), 26 - 41. https: // doi. org / 10.1080 / 03745484109442660
- Bonaparte, C. L. (1857) Conspectus generum avium. Vol. 2. E. J. Brill, Leyden, 232 pp.
- Rowley, G. D. (1877) On the genus Ptilopus. In: Rowley, G. D. (Ed.), Ornithological Miscellany. Vol. 2. Trubner and Co., London, pp. 337 - 351.
- Elliot, D. G. (1878) On the fruit-pigeons of the genus Ptilopus. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 1878, 500 - 575. https: // doi. org / 10.1111 / j. 1469 - 7998.1878. tb 07987. x
- Gill, F., Donsker, D. & Rasmussen, P. (2022) IOC World Bird List (v 12.1). Available from: http: // www. worldbirdnames. org / (accessed 28 March 2022) https: // doi. org / 10.14344 / IOC. ML. 12.1
- International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (1999) International code of zoological nomenclature. International Trust for Zoological Nomenclature, London, 306 pp.
- Schodde, R. & Mason, I. J. (1997) Zoological Catalogue of Australia. Aves (Columbidae to Coraciidae). Vol. 37.2. CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne, xiii + 440 pp.
- Dahl, K. (1898) Reiser i Nord-Vest-Australien. Alb. Cammermeyers Forlag, Kristiania, 462 pp.
- Dahl, K. (1926) In savage Australia. An account of a hunting and collecting expedition to Arnhem Land and Dampier Land. Philip Allan, London, 326 pp.