Red-backed Fairywren

识别特征

The smallest member of the genus Malurus, the red-backed fairywren measures 11.5 centimetres (4.5 in) and weighs 5–10 g (0.18–0.35 oz), averaging around 8 g (0.28 oz). The tail is approximately 6 centimetres (2.4 in) long and is black in the breeding male, and brown in eclipse males, females, and juvenile birds. Averaging 8.6 mm (0.3 in), the bill is relatively long, narrow, pointed, and wider at the base. Wider than it is deep, the bill is similar in shape to those of other birds that feed by probing or picking insects off of their environs.<p>Like other fairywrens, the red-backed fairywren is notable for its marked sexual dimorphism; the male adopts full breeding plumage by the fourth year, later than all other fairywrens apart from the closely related white-winged fairywren. The male in breeding plumage has a black head and body with striking red back and brown wings. At other times it has a brown upper body and white underparts. Some males, mainly younger, remain in eclipse plumage while breeding. The female looks remarkably similar with a buff brown body and a yellowish spot under the eye. The female of this species differs from those of other fairywren species in that it lacks a blue tint in the tail. Geographically, it follows Gloger's rule; female birds have whiter bellies and paler brown upperparts inland in sunnier climates. Juveniles of both sexes look very similar to females.<p>The typical song used by the red-backed fairywren to advertise its territory is similar to that of other fairywrens, namely a reel made up of an introductory note followed by repeated short segments of song, starting weak and soft and ending high and shrill with several syllables. The call is mostly made by the male during mating season. Birds will communicate with one another while foraging with a soft ssst, barely audible further than 10–15 m (33–49 ft) away. The alarm call is a high-pitched zit.

分类信息

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 μέλας, melas 'black' and κεφαλή, kephalē '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 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.<p>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 Australasian wren family, Maluridae in 1975. More recently, DNA analysis has shown that the family Maluridae is related to both the Meliphagidae (honeyeaters), and the Pardalotidae (pardalotes, scrubwrens, thornbills, gerygones and allies) within the large superfamily Meliphagoidea.<p>It is one of eleven species in the genus Malurus and is closely related to both the Australian white-winged fairywren, and the white-shouldered fairywren of New Guinea. Termed the bicoloured wrens by ornithologist Richard Schodde, these three species are notable for their lack of head patterns and ear tufts, and solid-coloured black or blue plumage with contrasting shoulder or wing colour; they replace each other geographically across northern Australia and New Guinea.<p>George Mack, ornithologist of the National Museum of Victoria, was the first to classify the three forms melanocephalus, cruentatus and pyrrhonotus as one species, although Richard Schodde reclassified pyrrhonotus as a hybrid from a broad hybrid zone in North Queensland; this area is bounded by the Burdekin, Endeavour and Norman Rivers. Breeding males of intermediate plumage, larger and scarlet-backed, or smaller and orange-backed, as well as forms that resemble one of the two parent subspecies, are all encountered within the hybrid zone. A molecular study published in 2008 focusing on the Cape York population found it was genetically closer to eastern forest populations than to those from the Top End. The Cape York birds became segregated around 0.27 million years ago, but gene flow still continues with eastern birds.<p>Two subspecies are currently recognised:<p>Ornithologist Richard Schodde has proposed that the ancestors of the two subspecies were separated during the last glacial period in the Pleistocene around 12,000 years ago. Aridity had pushed the grasslands preferred by the wren to the north, and with subsequent wetter warmer conditions it once again spread southwards and met the eastern form in northern Queensland and intermediate forms arose. The distribution of the three bi-coloured fairywren species indicates their ancestors lived across New Guinea and northern Australia in a period when sea levels were lower and the two regions were joined by a land bridge. Populations then became separated as sea levels rose, and New Guinea birds evolved into the white-shouldered fairywren, while Australian forms evolved into the red-backed fairywren and the arid-adapted white-winged fairywren. A 2017 genetic study using both mitochondrial and nuclear DNA found the ancestors of the red-backed and white-shouldered fairywrens diverged from each other around 3 million years ago, and their common ancestor diverged around 5 million years ago from a lineage that gave rise to the white-winged fairywren.

学名

Malurus melanocephalus

命名信息

(Latham, 1801)

目

Passeriformes

科

Maluridae

属

Malurus

分布与栖息地

The red-backed fairywren is endemic to Australia and can be seen along rivers and the coast from Cape Keraudren in northern Western Australia through the Kimberleys, Arnhem Land and the Gulf Country and into Cape York, with the Selwyn Range and upper reaches of the Flinders River as a southern limit. It is also found on the nearby offshore islands Groote Eylandt, Sir Edmund Pellew, Fraser, Melville and Bathurst Islands. Its range extends all the way down the east coast east of the Great Dividing Range to the Hunter River in New South Wales, preferring wet, grassy tropical or sub-tropical areas, with tall grasses such as blady grass (Imperata cylindrica), species of Sorghum, and Eulalia. It is not a true migrant, although it may be locally nomadic due to changes in vegetation, and may leave its territory after the breeding season. The species will retreat to fire-resistant cover at times of fire.<p>The red-backed fairywren avoids arid habitats, and is replaced to the south of its range by the white-winged fairywren.

迁徙

Resident species

行为

Migration pattern: Resident species.

保护状况

Population trend: stable.

种群趋势

stable