Note: "
Zosterops palpebrosa kikutii" MOMIYAMA 1927 is often claimed as a junior synonym for
Z. meyeni/j
aponicus batanis McGREGOR 1907 (
here), but
Z. m./j. batanis is (at least today) only found in the Philippines (on the Islands of Batan, Itbayat, Ivojos, Sabtang and Y'Ami)... and the
kikutii birds above were all collected on/in Taiwan (Formosa)
!?
As I wrote in [
the other thread],
batanis is also the common resident
Zosterops on two small islands which belong to Taiwan, Orchid Island and Green Island.
[
Orchid island] = Lanyu/Lán Yǔ/Lân-sū (Chinese: 蘭嶼) = Ponso no Tao (Yami/Tao name; this is how the locals call it) = Botel Tobago (Philippino name) = Kōtō-sho (Japanese: 紅頭嶼; this is how it was called during the Japanese rule, see "
Early history" on the Wikipedia page).
This last name, you find on all the labels of
kikutii specimens on the YIO website, either in Kanji [
here] or in Roman characters [
here]; on the specimen pages, it is indicated in the line directly above that which says "Taiwan"; this line gives you the collection locality as originally recorded.
[
Green Island] = Lüdao/Lǜdǎo (Chinese: 綠島) = Kashō-tō (Japanese: 火焼島; again, how it was called during the Japanese rule).
If the name itself is aimed at a Mr. Kikuti or a certain place on Taiwan, by the same name, is unknown to me. See (for examples);
here,
here,
here or
here.
To me these all look like references to a person, either an author or a collector.
(I'm not sure at all it's always the same person that is meant, though -- in the 3rd link you have a "Mr K. Kikuti"; in the 4th one a "Kikuti, T."; not to mention that, if the dates we have are correct, "our"
Y. Kikuti/-chi died in 1921, so these two sources [1939-1940] are probably too late to concern him.)
Your first link is the most interesting. This is to Mees' 1957
Systematic review of the Indo-Australian Zosteropidae, which you can get a complete pdf of [
here].
Mees gives Botel Tobago (= Orchid Island) as the type locality of
Z. palpebrosa kikutii Momiyama 1927. He lists "Kikuti" as an author having used the name
Zosterops palpebrosa batanis in 1916 in
Taiwantô no Tyôkai (臺灣島の鳥界, this is a work published by Kuroda, but I don't find it online right now) for specimens of this species originating from "Kôtôsyo" (presumably a variant of Kōtō-sho = Orchid Island).
Mees refers to Kuroda 1932 as the source of the synonymization of
kikutii and
batanis. Kuroda [
here] wrote:
32. Zosterops palpebrosa kikutii Momiyama = Z. p. batanis McGregor.
1927. — Trans. Nat. Hist. Soc. Formosa, xvii, no. 92, p. 304 (Botel Tobago). (In Japanese.)
Type : ♀ (?), Botel Tobago or Kotosho, January 1909. Y. Kikuchi coll. Momiyama coll., no. ?
Hab. Kashoto and Botel Tobago near Formosa ; Batan Is. in N. Philippines.
...thus confirming the type was collected by Y. Kikuchi on Botel Tobago/Kōtō-sho (= Orchid Island) in Jan 1909, as claimed in the Chinese blog post I referenced above. No reference here to a type deposition at the YIO, however.
So we still don't have the OD.
But we have a taxon named
kikutii, based on a specimen confirmed to have been collected by a Yonetaro Kikuchi, whose name is known to have Kikuti as a possible variant spelling. And we have a text written by Mees about this particular taxon, that associates specimens from the type locality to someone named Kikuti. I think it would now take a lot to convince me that Y. Kikuchi/-ti was not the dedicatee.
