Juan Cristóbal Gundlach’s collections of Puerto Rican birds with special regard to types

Sylke Frahnert,Pascal Eckhoff,Rafaela Aguilera Román,James W Wiley

doi:10.3897/zse.91.5550

Abstract

The German naturalist Juan Cristobal Gundlach (1810–1896) conducted, while a resident of Cuba, two expeditions to Puerto Rico in 1873 and 1875–6, where he explored the southwestern, western, and northeastern regions of this island. Gundlach made repre sentative collections of the island’s fauna, which formed the nucleus of the first natural history museums in Puerto Rico. When the natural history museums closed, only a few specimens were passed to other institutions, including foreign museums. None of Gund lach’s and few of his contemporaries’ specimens have survived in Puerto Rico. We lo cated 191 bird specimens (43 species) collected there by Gundlach, all of which are in foreign institutions, especially Museum fur Naturkunde Berlin. Here we list all located specimens and include data associated with them. Six new species were described out of the Gundlach collections from Puerto Rico, three of which are still taxonomically recog nized today. Information about the types of those taxa is given.

Highlights

Dr Juan Cristóbal (Johann Christoph) Gundlach (1810– 1896) arrived in Cuba from his native Germany in Janu ary 1839, intending to stay only a short time
Gundlach amassed superb represen tative collections especially insects, molluscs, reptiles, mammals, and birds. He maintained an active exchange of specimens with foreign institutions and friends, so a considerable part of his collection was dispersed among different countries from the very beginning
We provide a list of the types belonging to the Gundlach collection from Puerto Rico

Summary

Introduction

Dr Juan Cristóbal (Johann Christoph) Gundlach (1810– 1896) arrived in Cuba from his native Germany in Janu ary 1839, intending to stay only a short time. The material collected by Gundlach in Puerto Rico was sent in three shipments to the ZMB (arrival dates March 1874, June 1874, October 1876). There are further specimens of this species from the Gundlach collection in the ZMB (ZMB 22654, 22655 [missing], 25223 [collected by Stahl], 25224 [collect ed by Stahl]), the IES (IES 2584 and without number [missing, fide Valdes Ragués (1914)]) and the AMNH (AMNH 44792–44795) which were (most probable for the IES and two of the AMNH specimens) collected during Gundlach’s second expedition to Puerto Rico or even later by Agustin Stahl (1842–1917). Five additional specimens of this species were collect ed by Gundlach (ZMB 22672–22674; IES 2578; AMNH 38784), but all have been collected during his second ex pedition to Puerto Rico and, we do not regard them as types. The wherea bouts of the third wing is unknown, too (Olson 2015)

Summary

Findings

Concluding remarks