Taxonomy
The Variegated Fairywren was officially described by Nicholas Aylward Vigors and Thomas Horsfield in 1827, and was at first considered a colour variant of the Superb Fairywren. The scientific name commemorates the British collector Aylmer Bourke Lambert. It is one of 12 species of the genus Malurus, commonly known as fairywrens, found in Australia and lowland New Guinea. Within the genus it belongs to a group of four very similar species known collectively as the Chestnut-shouldered Fairywrens. The other three species are localised residents in restricted regions of Australia: the Lovely Fairywren (M. amabilis) of Cape York, the Red-winged Fairywren (M. elegans) of the southwest corner of Western Australia, and the Blue-breasted Fairywren (M. pulcherrimus) of southern Western Australia and the Eyre Peninsula. A 2011 analysis by Amy Driskell and colleagues of mitochondrial and nuclear DNA found that the Lovely Fairywren was nested within the Variegated Fairywren complex, and was the sister taxon of the Purple-backed subspecies assimilis.
Like other fairywrens, the Variegated Fairywren is unrelated to the true wrens. Initially fairywrens were thought to be a member of the old world flycatcher family Muscicapidae or warbler family Sylviidae, before being placed in the newly recognised Maluridae in 1975. More recently, DNA analysis has shown the family to be related to Meliphagidae (honeyeaters) and the Pardalotidae in a large superfamily Meliphagoidea.
Read more about this topic: Variegated Fairywren