To the Southern Hemisphere, Where They Have Long Been Pointed out As
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59.84.2P Article XVII.-A REVIEW OF THE DIVING PETRELS CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE BRE.WSTER-SANFORD COLLECTION.-31 BY ROBERT CUSHMAN MURPHY AND FRANCIS HARPER PLATES XX TO XXIV CONTENTS PAGE Introduction........................................................... 495 Material and Acknowledgments. ........... 496 History........................................................... 497 Critical Notes on the Genus Pelecanoides .................... 499 Synopsis of the Subgenera of Pelecanoides ................... 502 Systematic Account of the Species and Subspecies ................ 505 Subgenus Puffinuria Pelecanoides garnoti ......................... 505 Subgenus Porthmornis Pelecanoides magellani ........................ 513 Subgenus Pelagodyptes Pelecanoides georgicus .................... ...................... 519 Subgenus Pelecanoides Pelecanoides urinatrix urinatrix .................... 533 Pelecanoides urinatrix chathamensis .................. 537 Pelecanoides urinatrix berard ..................... 538 Pelecanoides urinatrix dacunhe ................ .................. 541 Plecanoides urinatrix coppingeri .................... 543 Pelecanoides exsul ...................... ........................ 544 .General Discussion ............................. 547 INTRODUCTION The diving petrels (Pelecanoididae) comprise a strikingly homo- geneous, monogeneric, obviously ancient group of Tubinares, the members of which exhibit few characters that might indicate their relationships with other divisions of the order. They have therefore always presented a difficult problem to taxonomists. Confined entirely to the southern hemisphere, where they have long been pointed out as biological analogues of the auklets and murrelets of the north, the Pelecanoididae have become distributed through a broad south temperate and subantarctic belt, one species alone having extended its range north- ward along the west coast of America into the tropics. 'First contribution, 1917, 'A New Albatross from the West Coast of South America.' Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., XXXVII, pp. 861-864. Second contribution, 1918, 'A Study of the Atlantic Oceanites,' Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., XXXVIII, pp. 117-146. 496 496 Bulletin Amerian Museum of Natural Hi8tory [Vol. XLIV Five species, representing four subgenera, are recognizable among the numerous specimens studied by the writers. Relatively speaking, the distinctions between the subgenera are subtle, if not slight. When we add to this the facts that reasonably large series of properly prepared specimens have never until within the last few years been brought together, and that the ranges of two species have been found to be of extraordinary extent, it is not surprising that the specific and geographic status of the various representatives has been so generally misunder- stood. So able a systematist as Dr. Coues wrote in 1866 that the three species which he provisionally recognized might " without great violence " be considered as extremes of a single very variable type. This investi- gator's material, however, was doubtless insufficient for him to appreciate certain structural characters of the bill upon which the current classifi- cations are largely based. It is noteworthy that two of the forms to which Coues referred have, by both a previous and a later authority, been relegated to different genera. MATERIAL AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Approximately 500 specimens of Pelecanoididae in American col- lections, and 100 specimens in European collections, have been examined by the writers in the preparation of the present review. Of this number, one hundred and eighty-seven skins, belonging to the Brewster-Sanford Collection, were taken in Peru, Chile, the Fuegian region, and the Falk- land Islands by Mr. R. H. Beck, between 1913 and 1915. Two hundred and forty-six skins, comprising the type and topotypes of a newly described species, were collected in the breeding seasons of 1912, 1913; and 1914, at the island of South Georgia, by the senior writer and by Mr. Joseph G. Correia, of New Bedford, Massachusetts. Specimens of the Old World diving petrels are still regrettably scarce in American mu- seums, but we have had at our disposal the skins collected at Kerguelen Island by Dr. Kidder in 1872, besides a small series of birds from New Zealand and its outliers. Our hearty thanks for the loan of material are due the following institutions andindividuals: the UnitedStatesNational Museum, through Dr. Charles W. Richmond; the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, through Dr. Witmer Stone; the Museum of Comparative Zoology, through Mr. Outram Bangs; the Carnegie Museum, through Mr. W. E. Clyde Todd; the Boston Society of Natural History, through Mr. W. Sprague Brooks; the Michigan University Museum, through Dr. Alexander G. Ruthven; the Public Museum of Milwaukee, through Murphy and Harper, A Review of the Divtng Petrels 497 Mr. Henry L. Ward; the California Academy of Sciences, through Dr. Barton W. Evermann; and Mr. James H. Fleming, of Toronto. In May 1919, after this paper was already in proof, the junior writer was enabled to make a brief visit to several museums in England and France, and to examine there a large amount of. especially interesting material pertinent to the present study. This material included the types or type series of six described forms of Pelecanoididae (Puffinuria garnotii lessoni Mathews, Puffinuria garnotii magellani Mathews, Pele- canoides urinatrix belcheri Mathews, Pelecanoides exsul Salvin, Pele- canoides dacunhae Nicoll, and Pelecanoideo urinatrix coppingeri Mathews), two of which are not represented by topotypes in American collections. Many courtesies and facilities were extended by Mr. Charles Chubb and Mr. David A. 1Bannerman, of the British Museum, by Mr. Gregory M. Mathews, of the Austral Avian Museum, by Dr. Ernst Hartert, ofthe Zoological Museum, Tring, and by Dr. E.-L. Trouessart, of the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris, to all of whom we are glad to acknowledge our indebtedness and express our appreciation. The results of our all too brief studies in these institutions have been incorporated in the present work. We are also much indebted to Dr. Frank M. Chapman and Dr. W. D. Matthew, of The American Museum of Natural History, for reading the manuscript; to Dr. R. E. Coker, of the United States Bureau of Fisheries, for placing at our disposal his account of Pelecanoides garnoti in advance of its publication in his paper on the guano birds of Peru'; to Dr. Harry C. Oberholser, of the United States Biological Survey, for helpful advice and criticism during the course of our investigations; and to Mr. James P. Chapin, of The American Museum of Natural His- tory, for making the sectional drawing of the bill of Pelecanoides garnoti which is reproduced in Fig. 1. HISTORY The early history of the nomenclature of the diving petrels is sum- marized by Mathews in the 'Birds of Australia,' II, pp. 232-239. The important steps in the successive discoveries, descriptions, and revisions are listed and brought up to date below. 1789. GMELIN ('Syst. Nat.,' p. 560) founded the species Procellaria urinatrix from the description in Latham's Synopsis, which was in turn based upon Forster's drawing made from a specimen taken in Queen Charlotte Sound, New Zealand. 11D19, Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., LVI, pp. 449-511. 498 Bulletin American Museum of Natural History [Vol. XLIV 1824. QUOY AND GAIMARD ('Voy. Uranie et Physicienne, Zool.,' p. 135, P1. xxxvii) described and figured Procellaria berard from a specimen which came on board their vessel near the Falkland Islands. 1828. LESSON ('Manuel d'Orn.,' II, p. 394) described Puffinuria garnoti from birds taken on the coast of Peru. In the same year the species was figured ('Voy. Coquille,' P1. XLVI). After 1828, as Mathews remarks, the various names were confusedly used for many years. The specific term urinatrix was at times employed for all the forms; berard was applied to breeding birds of New Zealand and elsewhere; even Forster's nomen nudum, Procellaria tridactyla, was revived for the New Zealand bird. 1866. COUES (Proc. Phil. Acad. Sci., pp. 188-190) published a thorough structural description of the genus and, without having seen sufficient material to be fully confident of his own judgment, he admitted three species-garnoti, of the west coast of South America, urinatrix, of "Australian Seas," and berardi, of the highly indefinite "Southern Oceans." Coues evidently recognized only distinctions in size among the diving petrels, for he held the opinion "that the colors of the plumage of all three are identical." 1896. SALVIN ('Cat. Birds Brit. Mus.,' XXV, pp. 437-439). A reconsideration of the material and literature was undertaken by Salvin in his monograph. He synonymized P. berard with P. urinatrix, giving the range of the species as "Australian and New Zealand Seas; also those of Cape Horn and the Falkland Islands." At the same time he proposed a new species, P. exsul, from the southern Indian Ocean, a range bounded on both sides by that of his revised urinatrix. 1906. NIcoLL (Bull. Brit. Orn. Cl., XVI, p. 103) added to the list of described species Pelecanoides dacunha?, based upon examples collected at the island of Tristan da Cunha, in the South Atlantic. 1907. REICHENOW ('Deutsche Suidp. Exp.,' IX, Zool., pp. 493, 558) united exsul with urinatrix on the ground that birds answering Salvin's description of each species are found in the same breeding localities. 1910. GODMAN ('Monogr. Petrels,' pp. 299-306) treated the taxono- mic status of the