One question please- if a type is lost/destroyed, does that mean it is then invalid and a neotype must be designated?
No.
A neotype can only be designated if exceptional circumstances make this designation necessary.
If a neotype is designated in a case where there is no need to fix a real problem about the identity/properties of the lost type, this designation is invalid; the status-quo is to be maintained and the designated specimen is not to be treated as a type.
Assuming so, there must be skins still in existence from the Vogelkop populations?
There certainly
are specimens from these populations; but
the authors did not want to designate one of them.
They developed a theory that the bird shown on the earliest illustrations (*) was a bird from the western Central Cordillera. Consequently, they decided to modify the application of the name. But they didn't stop there: they noted that there was still room for disputes and, "to fix application of
superba Pennant to the population of
Lophorina that" [in their opinion] "Daubenton’s (1765–1781) plate 632 most closely and most likely depicts", they designated a neotype from the western Central Cordillera population.
*) Daubenton/Martinet and Sonnerat -- these are presumed to show the same individual, which was the first and only one to have reached France at this time, based i.a. on what Buffon said of it (see the footnote [
here]). The bird shown on Daubenton's/Martinet's plate is the holotype of
Paradisea superba because it is this plate that Pennant gave this name to.
I am sure at that date in the late 18th century the skins would be from West Papua, and I am surprised they have shuffled the taxa so superba is no longer from that region. I am in favour of the split but not the reallocation of the nominate taxa from what I can grasp here. This statement in particular I find surprising:
"In considering the nomenclatural impact of a shift in application of superba Pennant, we submit, given the splitting of species advocated here, that transferring superba to the most widespread and familiar segregate species serves stability better than keeping it for a localised endemic in the Vogelkop".
There can hardly be any question that this type of thing is disruptive.
It will generate confusion, as, from now on, it will be necessary to know which interpretation an author accepted when he published a statement about
L. s. superba. Even if the reinterpretation was to be immediately and universally accepted, there would still be no way to change the nomenclature in the works that are already published, hence this situation would persist.
I am just finishing a book on Birds of Paradise and Bowerbirds and have outlined the new proposals and agreed with the split but so far without altering superba , except for the merging of sphinx into minor
In my reading, a neotype designation is
not valid (i.e., it does not exist) if the author(s) failed to provide "
evidence that the neotype
is consistent with what is known of the former name-bearing type from the original description and from other sources"; and "
evidence that the neotype
came as nearly as practicable from the original type locality" (
ICZN Art.75.3.5-6). If, after having read the paper, you still think that the available evidence shows that the type really lacked black centres on its breast shield feathers, and that it was from the Vogelkop, then you evidently disagree that these conditions were fulfilled, and I believe that you should treat the designation as invalid.
If you are not free to do this, this means that a neotype designation allows any idiosyncratic, disruptive and questionable reinterpretation of an otherwise wholly unproblematic case to be unilaterally written in stone and forced upon a disagreeing world, provided that the author(s) fulfilled the set of purely technical requirements. And this just seems too wrong.