Western Ground Parrots in the Australian Museum

The image above was supplied by Dr Walter Boles of the Australian Museum, Sydney and is used with permission.

The three Western Ground Parrot specimens in the Australian Museum collection were all collected by Mr George Masters in the vicinity of King George's Sound, on the south coast of Western Australia near the town of Albany. Western Ground Parrots can no longer be found there.

No.23687 is a male collected in April 1866.

No.23538 is a male collected in April 1866.

No. 23539 is a female bird and was collected on 20 March 1868.

It would seem that Masters returned to the site in 1868 to collect a female for the AM as the birds collected in 1866 were both males.

The female was designated a syntype* by Alfred North in 1911 when he classified the Western Ground Parrots as Pezoporus flaviventris, a separate species from Pezoporus wallicus. This classification was over-ruled by Gregory Mathews a few years later. He classified the Western Ground Parrot as a subspecies: Pezoporus wallicus flaviventris. In 2010 there was a reversion to P. flaviventris and P. wallicus, each as separate species (Murphy et al. 2010).

More on the scientific names for the Western Ground Parrot may be found on the b-log posting of 21 September, 2013, entitled 'Many names'.

* Meaning of syntype (from Wikipedia)

1. One of two or more biological specimens or other elements used for the original published description of a species or subspecies where no holotype was designated.
2. One of two or more biological specimens or other elements simultaneously designated as type specimens in the original published description of a species or subspecies.

Reference
Murphy, S.A., Joseph, L., Burbidge, A.H. and Austin, J. (2010). A cryptic and critically endangered species revealed by mitochondrial DNA analyses: the western Ground Parrot. Conservation genetics 12: 595-600.