Nesoctites micromegas
date: label: Collection Date
content: Aug 1919
name: label: Collector
content: Dr. W. L. Abbott
notes: label: Notes
content: Dear Helen and Gary I hope you are both flourishing! My colleague Judy White and I have been exchanging e-mails with Brian Schmidt regarding 2 woodpecker spirit specimens (Nesoctites micromegas[USNM 226802] and Picumnus ?exilis[USNM 318715]) that originated from the Smithsonian. This arose when Judy drew my attention to the fact that the Nesoctites, on which she was engaged in research with a German colleague, Albrecht Manegold - it is the only spirit specimen of this genus here - was unregistered in the NHM collection, but needed to be so that it could be referred to in their planned publication. Brian then informed us that your registers shed no light on whether they were a loan, exchange or gift to NHM. Further research by Judy revealed they had been sent by Wetmore to Percy Lowe, being received in NHM in Feb 1944 and then referred to by Lowe in a paper in Ibis 1946 (p. 112). Both have been dissected, presumably by Lowe, who noted in print that the skull of the Picumnus was actually very damaged before he received it. Brian then discovered clear evidence that the specimens had been despatched from the Smithsonian as a “loan for study” in December 1943 (amazing how science continued in the war!). Possibly because Lowe died in August 1948, and his memory had begun to fail a year or two earlier, the specimens sat in the NHM spirit collection from then till now – an unrecognised loan of 70 years! Because of the current research, we would be very keen to keep the Nesoctites in particular.
label: Notes
content: Paper catalog has this in accession 64239
label: Record Last Modified
content: 19 Sep 2024
label: Specimen Count
content: 1
place: label: Place
content: Samana, Dominican Republic, North America
setName: label: See more items in
content: Vertebrate Zoology
label: See more items in
content: Birds
publisher: label: Published Name
content: Nesoctites micromegas
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Vertebrate Zoology - Birds Division
identifier: label: USNM Number
content: 226802
taxonomicName: label: Taxonomy
content: Animalia, Chordata, Vertebrata, Aves, Piciformes, Picidae
physicalDescription: label: Preparation
content: Fluid: Whole
label: Sex
content: Unknown
label: Stage
content: Adult