The German naturalist Juan Cristóbal 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 representative 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 Gundlach’s and few of his contemporaries’ specimens have survived in Puerto Rico. We located 191 bird specimens (43 species) collected there by Gundlach, all of which are in foreign institutions, especially Museum für 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 recognized today. Information about the types of those taxa is given.

Der deutsche Naturforscher Johann Christoph Gundlach (1810–1896), auf Kuba lebend, führte 2 Expeditionen (1873 und 1875–6) nach Puerto Rico durch, auf denen er die südwestlichen, westlichen und nordöstlichen Regionen dieser Insel erforschte. Gundlach fertigte repräsentative Sammlungen der Fauna an, welche den Kristallisationskern des ersten naturkundlichen Museums Puerto Ricos bildeten. Die naturkundlichen Museen wurden später geschlossen und nur wenige Präparate wurden an andere Einrichtungen einschließlich ausländischen Museen übergeben. Kein Präparat von Gundlach und nur wenige aus dieser Zeit überdauerten auf Puerto Rico. Wir lokalisierten 191 von Gundlach gesammelte Vogelpräparate (43 Arten), welche sich heute alle an ausländischen Institutionen, insbesondere am Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, befinden. Eine Liste gibt Übersicht über alle nachgewiesenen Präparate. Aus der ornithologischen Sammlung Gundlachs von Puerto Rico wurden 6 Arten neu beschrieben, von denen 3 heute noch taxonomisch relevant sind. Informationen zu den Typen für diese Taxa werden angegeben.

A. Stahl, collection, egg, exploration, museum, specimen, type

A. Stahl, Ei, Museum, Präparat, Reisebericht, Sammlung, Typus

Dr. Juan Cristóbal (Johann Christoph) Gundlach (1810–1896) arrived in Cuba from his native Germany in January 1839, intending to stay only a short time. Instead, he remained in Cuba until the end of his long and productive life, with the exception of short trips to exhibit his collections and visit family and colleagues in Europe, and two extended expeditions to Puerto Rico from June to December 1873 and from September 1875 to July 1876. Starting from the western part he explored the northern region to San Juan, as well as the south western region of Puerto Rico. Additionally he made two trips to the central parts of the island (Lares and Gaguana/Jayuya).

His zoological interests were manifold, and he published his observations widely, not only within Cuba, but also in several international journals, in Spanish, German, and English. Gundlach amassed superb representative 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. This resulted in single specimens collected by Gundlach housed in several diverse collections today. Our purpose here is to list those vouchers of the avifauna of Puerto Rico available for research on this island as well as for international taxonomists. We also hope to stimulate interest of museum curators to search for additional specimens in their collections.

A summary of Gundlach’s lifework, especially of his two expeditions (including a map) as well as his influence on the development of natural history in Puerto Rico is presented in Wiley et al. (2014).

Even as a boy, Gundlach was interested in studying animals and got his introduction to taxidermy by helping his older brother preserve anatomical and biological specimens. After his university studies, Gundlach decided to make an expedition to Suriname. To finance the travel, Robert Wilhelm Bunsen (1811–1899), second director of the “Verein für Naturwissenschaften Kassel”, initiated an arrangement wherein shares were issued to support Gundlach’s 1838 expedition to Suriname. Some 105 shareholders subscribed for 203 shares with a value of 1218 Thaler (Dathe and Gonzales Lopez 2002). This financial support of Gundlach’s expedition was made on the condition that he sends scientific objects back to Germany to reimburse the travel expenses. Although Gundlach made it only as far as Cuba, he sent large shipments of scientific material to Germany (Anonymous 2011; Dathe and Gonzales Lopez 2002). Eduard Sezekorn (1796–1869), managing director of the Verein für Naturwissenschaften Kassel, organized the sale of the collected materials.

This was the start of Gundlach’s intensive long-term collecting activities in the Caribbean. The specimens gathered there were widely distributed from the very beginning. But Gundlach also retained extensive collected materials for his own museums of natural history in Cuba. In his autobiography, Gundlach (1896) wrote that one specimen of Mellisuga helenae which he collected in 1844 was the first specimen of his personal collection. He realized that the hummingbird was an unknown species and therefore he decided to keep it rather than to send it to Germany. Thereafter, Gundlach kept one specimen of each species, except of fish and large reptiles, for his own collection (Gundlach 1896). A third part of his collected specimens was sent to his friends and colleagues in Cuba as well as all over the world for exchange or to serve as the basis for scientific discussions (e.g. Ramón M. Forns (La Habana, fl. 1858), Tomas Blanco (San Juan), Agustin Stahl (Mayagüez), George N. Lawrence (New York), and Wilhelm Peters and Jean-Luis Cabanis (Berlin)). In principle, the specimens which Gundlach collected in Puerto Rico were intended for comparison with the specimens from his Cuba collecting and suffered the same fate as the specimens from Cuba. By the 1870s, Gundlach’s travel expenses should have been recouped by his investors, so the Puerto Rican specimens remained in Gundlach’s collection or were sent only to friends and scientific colleagues, and none should have been sent to Germany to settle his 1838 account. Finally, in gratitude for their patronage and benefaction over the years, Gundlach gave many of his bird specimens to friends as salon decorations.

Today, Gundlach’s personal collection is housed in the Instituto de Ecología y Sistemática (IES, La Habana, Cuba). The IES collections have received little evaluation since the catalogues of Gundlach (1895) and Valdes Ragués (1914), with the exception of recent reviews of Cuban birds (Aguilera Román and Garrido 2000; Aguilera Román et al. 2002; Wiley et al. 2008), reptiles and amphibians (Moreno García et al. 2002), and Noctuoidea (Lepidoptera) (Becker 2002). We examined 18 Cuban collections (Wiley et al. 2008), but found bird specimens from Gundlach’s Puerto Rican expeditions only at the IES, although several of his Cuban bird specimens were dispersed among other Cuban institutions. Most of the specimens collected in Puerto Rico by Gundlach were sent to institutions in the United States and Europe, especially Germany. We found Puerto Rican specimens collected by him in seven institutions (Table 1; see Suppl. material 1 for names of all institutions we visited or queried regarding holdings of Gundlach’s Puerto Rican bird specimens). Most of these specimens were direct donations from Gundlach, whereas a few arrived at those institutions as part of the collections of others, such as the Henry W. Bryant collection containing specimens given by Gundlach to G. N. Lawrence.

Most of the Gundlach specimens received by the U. S. National Museum of Natural History (USNM) came as direct donations (~12 separate acquisitions) from him. There was one accession in 1868 of ten specimens from Puerto Rico, and an accession in 1877 of 9–10 birds from the West Indies (in litt. James Dean to JWW; 10 November 2006; USNM).

Today, the most comprehensive collection of Gundlach’s specimens from Puerto Rico is housed in the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. Once he settled in Cuba, Gundlach sent his ornithological observations to Eduard Sezekorn, who transformed Gundlach’s notes into manuscripts and sent them to Jean Louis Cabanis (1816–1906), the bird curator of the Zoological Museum Berlin (ZMB, today Museum für Naturkunde). Cabanis published the articles with remarks in his Journal für Ornithologie. The first specimens from Cuba arrived at ZMB in 1862 through Sezekorn and were most probably part of the remuneration of Gundlach’s travel expenses to the “Verein für Naturwissenschaften Kassel”. A direct relation between the ZMB (Wilhelm Peters, Jean-Luis Cabanis) and Gundlach was established in 1861 (Peters) and 1862 (Cabanis) at the latest, more than 10 years before his first trip to Puerto Rico (Museum für Naturkunde, Historische Bild- u. Schriftgutsammlungen, Zool. Mus. [hereafter MfNHBSZM], Signatur ZMB S I, Gundlach, I.). Following his participation in the Exposition Universelle in Paris, Gundlach visited the ZMB in 1867 for a week, where he met with the museum’s curator Wilhelm Peters (1815–1883). Further specimen donations to the ZMB followed (MfNHBSZM Signatur ZMB S I, Gundlach, I)

The material collected by Gundlach in Puerto Rico was sent in three shipments to the ZMB (arrival dates March 1874, June 1874, October 1876). Birds from other collectors (Blanco, Krug) in Puerto Rico were included in those shipments to the ZMB (in litt. JCG to Wilhelm Peters [hereafter WP]; 15 February 1874; from Fermina, Cuba; MfNHBSZM, Signatur ZMB S I, Gundlach, I., p. 219a). All, however, were registered with Gundlach as collector, and the determination of the actual collector is difficult or impossible today because the original labels were not conserved. Further, it seems that not all specimens Gundlach sent were maintained in the Berlin collection. Thus, a hummingbird mentioned by Gundlach in a letter to Peters dated 15 February 1874 is not available today and could not be traced in museum catalogues (MfNHBSZM, Signatur ZMB S I, Gundlach, I., p. 129a). This, and other specimens, may have been lost, destroyed, or exchanged with other collections.

The first of Gundlach’s three shipments included 34 bird specimens that arrived at ZMB in March 1874. A second shipment, with 28 birds (according to the catalogue) arrived in June 1874. All of those birds were collected during Gundlach’s 1873 expedition to Puerto Rico. The month of collection was recorded for most birds in the second shipment, whereas it was not for most specimens in the first shipment.

A third shipment of three boxes (including one of birds) of specimens collected during Gundlach’s 1875–76 expedition to Puerto Rico arrived at ZMB in October 1876. Gundlach mentioned that among these birds were specimens from Krug’s collection (in litt. JCG to WP; 17 August 1876; from Mayagüez, Puerto Rico; MfNHBSZM, Signatur ZMB S I, Gundlach, I., p. 259.). Cabanis confirmed that 30 stuffed birds, 67 eggs, and 7 nests arrived in October 1876 (MfNHBSZM, Signatur ZMB S I, Gundlach, I., p. 266). Twenty-eight of those birds were catalogued in October 1876. After this date seven additional specimens from Puerto Rico arrived in June 1878, January 1879, December 1880, and June 1881. Those specimens were probably part of Stahl’s collection, which Gundlach had received at that time (in litt. JCG to Jean Louis Cabanis; 29 September 1878; MfNHBSZM, Signatur ZMB S I, Gundlach, I., p. 294). It cannot be excluded, however, that Gundlach sent some specimens of his own expeditions which had been maintained in his personal collection.

Upon their arrival in Berlin, the specimens were assigned entrance numbers (B-numbers) and, after preparation, inventory numbers. Only five specimens of the second shipment (1874) were inventoried later. All of Gundlach’s specimens for the ZMB collection were mounted when received. Collectors labels were removed usually and new museum labels were created. Of the inventoried specimens, 70% have survived (98% of the eggs), and 85% of those have been transformed to skins. The transformation from mounts to skins was initiated by Erwin Stresemann (1889–1972) in the middle of the 20^th century to better protect the specimens.

In general, Gundlach seemed to collect for taxonomical purposes only, and he used the specimens as vouchers and for determination. But the exact collecting locality and the collecting date are never mentioned. For some specimens a month is given on the label as Gundlach mentioned that several birds are to be found in different seasons only. The lack of more data is unfortunate, because locality and date data could provide a more useful baseline in assaying what has been the dramatic change of biodiversity that has occurred in Puerto Rico, including several species that have been extirpated from in the island or are now extinct (Wiley 1985, Snyder et al. 1987).

We present an annotated inventory of Gundlach’s bird specimens (skins and mounts, as well as eggs and nests) from Puerto Rico in the two largest collections: the collection at the MfN, Berlin, and the collection at the IES, La Habana, with notes on Gundlach’s Puerto Rican specimens encountered in other institutions. Both the IES and MfN specimens have been unreported, except for Valdes Ragués’ (1914) incomplete catalogue of the Museo cubano “Gundlach” when it was housed at the Instituto de Segunda Enseñanza, La Habana. The IES specimens were “discovered” among Gundlach’s collection of Cuban skins, mounts, eggs, and nests during our recent inventory. The MfN specimens remained more or less unknown or international scientists had thought they had been destroyed in WWII. Our 2011 inventory, however, revealed that although the MfN collections were damaged during the Allied bombing of Berlin, many of Gundlach’s specimens and their records survived. Figures 1 to 3 are examples of how the specimens appear today in the MfN.

Figure 1. 

ZMB 21494: Melanerpes portoricensis, female, collected by Gundlach on Puerto Rico in November 1873, mounted and labelled in ZMB (photo Hwa Ja Götz, MfN).

Figure 2. 

ZMB 21632: Mimus polyglottos, female, collected by Gundlach on Puerto Rico in October 1873, mounted and labelled in ZMB, remounted in the 20^th century (photo Hwa Ja Götz, MfN).

Figure 3. 

Original label of Gundlach of the holotype of Chlorestes gertrudisZMB 21628 (photo Hwa Ja Götz, MfN).

The list, as well as the species names (Latin, English) including current subspecies names, follow Dickinson and Remsen (2013) and Dickinson and Christidis (2014). The scientific name used by Gundlach (1874, 1878a) is added in brackets. For each species, institution and catalogue number(s), sex, date(s) of collection, and locality, as available, are presented. As already written, none of the IES Puerto Rican specimens has detailed data. Nevertheless, some of the specimens can be matched to Gundlach’s published accounts of his collecting activities, and thus further data were derived from interpretation. For specimens housed in MfN, we use the original institution name of ZMB. The ZMB specimens could generally be assigned to the different collecting expeditions due to the accession date. We present information included by Valdes Ragués in his 1914 catalogue of Gundlach’s collection in the Instituto de Segunda Enseñanza. Puerto Rican specimens in the Instituto de Segunda Enseñanza museum were identified by a yellow label, but Valdes Ragués (1914) did not always mention that information in his catalogue. Full names and acronyms for institutions are presented in Table 1. Expanded specimen data are available from the authors.

Following the specimen list, we provide a list of the types belonging to the Gundlach collection from Puerto Rico. Six species were described from that collection. Except for Asio portoricensis, all of those species were detected by Gundlach himself, but in some cases they were “officially” (in the sense of the ICZN) published by other authors. This was true for G. N. Lawrence (New York), who received a bird collection from Gundlach and J. L. Cabanis (Berlin).

Mayagüez (Mayaguez: town on the west coast of Puerto Rico [18°12’03”N; 67°08’22”W (DMS)]; Gundlach collected there several times in both expeditions.

Lares: town in the moutains of western Puerto Rico [18°17’40”N; 66°52’37”W (DMS)]; Gundlach collected there from July to October 1873.

Cueva de Pajita: cave near Callejones Barrio, western Puerto Rico [18° 19′38”N; 66° 50’56”W (DMS)]; Gundlach collected there in June and July 1873.

Quebradillas: town in western Puerto Rico [18°28’25”N; 66°56’18”W (DMS)]; Gundlach collected in the area in October and November 1873, and winter and spring 1876.

Vega Baja: town in in north-central Puerto Rico [18°26’39” N; 66°23’15” W (DMS)].

The following list summarizes the information on the specimens of Puerto Rico originally belonged to the collection of Gundlach (Gundlach mainly given as collector).

The catalogue is structured as follows:

Scientific species name, subspecies name, English name [scientific name used by Gundlach]

Number of specimens: ♂ ♀ + unsexed. Registration number. Registered dates.

Number of eggs: Registration number. Registered dates.

Number of nests: Registration number. Registered dates.

In summary, we can account for 191 bird skin and mount specimens collected by Gundlach in Puerto Rico, representing 43 species. An additional 69 eggs (19 species) and 6 nests (5 species) were located, including eggs of 7 species not represented by skins. A total of 147 skin and mount specimens collected by Gundlach in Puerto Rico were found in foreign institutions, with the Museum fuer Naturkunde holding the largest number (102), including two holotypes and two syntypes (Table 1). The MfN collection contains 53.4% of all specimens, and 93.0% of the species in all collections examined. Further, MfN specimens represent 26.1% of the 153 species Gundlach reported from Puerto Rico (Gundlach 1878a, 1878b).

We found 44 specimens (41 extant), representing 28 species, collected by Gundlach in Puerto Rico in the IES collection. Valdes Ragués (1914) listed 18 Puerto Rican specimens by name or group in his analysis of Gundlach’s collection, with another improbable 15 Audubon’s Shearwaters. The IES collection contains 23.0% of all specimens, and 65.1% of the species in all examined collections (Gundlach 1878a, 1878b; Table 1). Further, the IES specimens represent 18.3% of the 153 species Gundlach reported from Puerto Rico.

Conspicuously missing from all collections of Gundlach’s bird skins from Puerto Rico are specimens of shorebirds, waterfowl, and waders, even though he actively collected in several coastal and wetland areas and did take several eggs of waterbirds.

Unfortunately, none of Juan Gundlach’s journals or field notes has been found. Such material might provide much-desired additional data on Gundlach’s collected specimens, much of which would be valuable in further determination of types. Some information may be available in Gundlach’s correspondence, and we urge others to search for all such materials.

The theft of the Puerto Rican Parrot specimen, sadly, was not the last of Gundlach’s bird specimens to have been stolen from the IES collection. In 2007, thieves again raided the collection, this time making off with several Gundlach-collected birds. Tragically, the only Cuban Macaw (Ara tricolor) specimen in Cuba (and one of 19 known specimens worldwide; Wiley and Kirwan 2013) was taken by the thieves, who also stole air conditioners and other valuable items essential for maintaining the collections. The specimens were most likely taken not for their scientific value or for their value to rogue private collectors, but rather for use in local spiritual rituals. Although substantial improvements have been made in security, the IES collections are still vulnerable to future raids. The IES collection of birds and other natural history specimens is an important record of Cuban and Puerto Rican biodiversity, but is threatened by a lack of funding to maintain the collections. Such funding is desperately needed to prevent the further degradation or loss of these important treasures.

We hope to stimulate interest of museum curators to search for additional specimens in their collections.

We thank the curators and assistants of institutions and private collections for information on specimens collected by Gundlach. We particularly acknowledge the assistance of Dr. Eric Pasquet (MNHN); Dr. Robert Prŷs-Jones (BMNH); Ulf Johansson (NR); James Dean and Craig Ludwig (USNM); Mary LeCroy, Paul Sweet and Thomas J. Trombone (AMNH); Jeremiah Trimble (MCZ); and David Willard (FMNH). Lynda Garrett (Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, Laurel, Maryland) and Lloyd F. Kiff and Travis Rosenberry (Peregrine Fund library) helped in obtaining literature. Dr. H. Landsberg (MfN) interpreted handwriting in archived materials at Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. Many thanks also to Hwa Ja Götz (MfN) for the photos and to Renate van den Elzen (ZFMK) and Mary LeCroy (AMHN) for very helpful remarks on the manuscript.