Invalid usage of Pyrrhulopsis Reichenbach as the generic name for the Fijian shining parrots, Prosopeia Bonaparte, and its consequences.

Recently in this journal, Gregory & Dickinson (2012) replaced Prosopeia Bonaparte,1854, the widely used and longaccustomed generic name for the Fijian shining parrots, with Pyrrhulopsis Reichenbach, 1850. This action was then followed in the influential Howard & Moore global checklist of birds (Dickinson & Remsen 2013: 377) and the websites Avibase (2013) and TiF Checklist (2013). Gregory and Dickinson’s decision rested on information in Kashin (1978), which showed that G.R. Gray (1855) was the first to assign a type species to Pyrrhulopsis Reichenbach. Gray designated “Coracopsis? personata G.R. Gray,1848”, one of the shining parrots, by subsequent monotypy. Until then, Prosopeia had been used for the shining parrots for most of the 20th century into the 21st, following Peters (1937: 250, footnote). Gregory & Dickinson’s (2012) action nevertheless contravenes the purpose of Article 23.2 of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, hereafter “the Code”, which stresses that the Principle of Priority is not to be used to upset long-accepted names in their accustomed meaning. Because of this, we had been preparing an application to the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature to conserve Prosopeia—until we discovered an evident error in Gregory & Dickinson’s argument. The apparent error, which makes application to conserve Prosopeia unnecessary, is explained here to affirm Prosopeia as the valid generic name for the shining parrots. Mathews (1917: 289), in the reference footnoted by Peters (1937: 250), showed that Reichenbach (1850) based Pyrrhulopsis on the diagrammatic uncoloured figures of the head, foot and tail of a parrot of unassigned species. The figures, which we have examined, are too generalized to be of unambiguous identity; yet the name Pyrrhulopsis is still available under Article 12.2.7 of the Code. Mathews went on to point out that the first author to assign species to it was Bonaparte (1854) who had nominated six South American parrotlets. The species assigned by Bonaparte, with their current in-use synonyms (Dickinson & Remsen 2013) in parentheses, are: ‘hueti Temm.’ (= huetii Temminck), ‘purpuratus Gm.’ (= purpuratus Gmelin), ‘melanopterus Gm.’ (= batavica Boddaert), ‘porphyurus Sw.’ (= purpuratus Gmelin), ‘surdus Ill.’ (= surdus Kuhl) and ‘melanotus Licht.’ (= melanonotus Wied). The nominal species Coracopsis personata G.R. Gray from “?New Guinea” (=Fiji) was not included. Therefore, unless it was assigned earlier to Pyrrhulopsis in a publication of which, after exhaustive search, we are unaware, Coracopsis personata G.R. Gray was not one of the originally included species of that nominal genus (Article 67.2.2 of the Code). It follows that Coracopsis personata G.R. Gray is ineligible for designation as type species of Pyrrhulopsis under Articles 69.1 and 69.2 of the Code. Consequently, Pyrrhulopsis Reichenbach cannot be used for the shining parrots. The first available generic name that we have found for the shining parrots is Prosopeia Bonaparte, based explicitly on the single species Coracopsis personata G.R. Gray, 1848, and available under Article 12.2.5 of the Code (Bonaparte 1854). Coracopsis personata is automatically its type species by monotypy (Article 68.3 of the Code). Ironically, it was in the very paper in which he published Prosopeia that Bonaparte first assigned the South American parrotlets to Pyrrhulopsis Reichenbach. Oversight of that action could have had unfortunate consequences. Prosopeia is not just a routine generic name for hum-drum, out-of-the-way birds, but the name used for a small group of rare, brilliantly plumaged and commercially valuable parrots in global lists of threatened fauna (IUCN Red List 2013; CITES 2013). One of the three species involved is graded as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, and another as near threatened. Countries worldwide use the names on these lists in their fauna protection and control laws. There is always a lag, usually long, between any name change in ornithological checklists, particularly those on web-sites, and its updating in legal statutes. That leaves loopholes which invite exploitation by the international trade in wildlife. Changing a generic