Red-backed Fairywren - Taxonomy

Taxonomy

The Red-backed Fairywren was first collected from the vicinity of Port Stephens in New South Wales and described by ornithologist John Latham in 1801 as the Black-headed Flycatcher (Muscicapa melanocephala); its specific epithet derived from the Ancient Greek melano- 'black' and kephalos 'head'. However, the specimen used by Latham was a male in partial moult, with mixed black and brown plumage and an orange back, and he named it for its black head. A male in full adult plumage was described as Sylvia dorsalis, and the explorers Nicholas Aylward Vigors and Thomas Horsfield gave a third specimen from central Queensland the name Malurus brownii, honouring botanist Robert Brown. John Gould described Malurus cruentatus in 1840 from a short-tailed scarlet-backed specimen collected in Northwestern Australia by Benjamin Bynoe aboard the HMS Beagle on its third voyage. The first three names were synonymised into Malurus melanocephalus by Gould who maintained his form as a separate species. An intermediate form from north Queensland was described as pyrrhonotus. Ornithologist Tom Iredale proposed the common name "Elfin-wren" in 1939, however this was not taken up.

Like other fairywrens, the Red-backed Fairywren is unrelated to the true wren (family Troglodytidae). It was previously classified as a member of the old world flycatcher family Muscicapidae and later as a member of the warbler family Sylviidae before being placed in the newly recognised fairywren family Maluridae in 1975. More recently, DNA analysis has shown that the Maluridae family is related to the Meliphagidae (honeyeaters), and the Pardalotidae (pardalotes, scrubwrens, thornbills, gerygones and allies) in the large superfamily Meliphagoidea.

Within the Maluridae, it is one of 12 species in its genus, Malurus. It is most closely related to the Australian White-winged Fairywren, with which it makes up a phylogenetic clade, with the White-shouldered Fairywren of New Guinea as the next closest relative. Termed the bicoloured wrens by ornithologist Richard Schodde, these three species are notable for their lack of head patterns and ear tufts, and one-coloured black or blue plumage with contrasting shoulder or wing colour; they replace each other geographically across northern Australia and New Guinea.