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Type: Correspondence
Published: 2014-03-17
Page range: 397–398
Abstract views: 34
PDF downloaded: 21

The correct authorship and type locality of Melanocorypha leucoptera (Aves: Passeriformes, Alaudidae)

Australian National Wildlife Collection, CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences, GPO Box 1700, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia.
Department of Biological Sciences, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, U.S.A.
Flat 3, Bolsover Court, 19 Bolsover Road, Eastbourne, BN20 7JG, United Kingdom
Le Pouget, Sumène 30440, France
Department of Ornithology, American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West at 79th Street, New York, NY 10024, U.S.A
Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand
Diptimento di Biologia Animale, Universita, Piazza Botta 9, Pavia 27100, Italy
Aves Passeriformes Alaudidae

Abstract

Mlíkovský (2013) proposed replacing the widely-used Melanocorypha leucoptera (Pallas, 1811) with Melanocorypha leucoptera (Hablizl, 1785) as the correct name for the White-winged Lark, with consequent shift in type locality from the Irtyš River-Baraba steppe region in south Siberia to the Crimea. This action breaches Art. 80.9 of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN 1999), hereafter “the Code”. That article states that “no ruling given by the Commission in relation to a particular work, name, or nomenclatural act is to be set aside without the consent of the Commission”. Melanocorypha leucoptera of Pallas (1811), as published in his Zoographia Rosso-Asiatica, was conserved explicitly in Opinion 403 of the Commission (ICZN 1956), and no consent to Mlíkovský’s findings has been given since.