Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2014

Abstract

The Gray Flycatcher (Empidonax wrightii) now bears the specific epithet that Spencer Fullerton Baird provisionally designated' for a potential new species of this genus—which he described from two seemingly undated Smithsonian Institution museum skins (i.e., USNM 7234 and 7237), and which the United States and Mexican Boundary Survey botanist Charles Wright had purportedly collected at El Paso, El Paso County, Texas presumably in the early 1850s. However, our research indicates that: (a) the latter locality did not exist as such when Wright collected these specimens, which respective dates we have determined were almost certainly 4 May and 3 April 1852; and (b) he had instead obtained them at the U.S. Boundary Commission's operational headquarters located upstream along the Rio Grande at nearby Frontera, Texas. That facility was soon destroyed by a massive flood that swept down this river on the night of 25 June 1852—since which date a series of international and interstate agreements resulted in its former site having been variously shifted between Chihuahua, Texas, and New Mexico until 1930, when it was officially placed in present Sunland Park, Doña Ana County in the latter state. Consequently, it is this latest location that we are here proposing as the emended type locality of E. wrightii Baird, while at the same time also formally designating the taxon's sole remaining Smithsonian syntype (USNM 7234) as its lectotype.'

Comments

OCCASIONAL PAPERS OF THE MUSEUM OF SOUTHWESTERN BIOLOGY 11

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