Malurus melanocephalus

The red-backed fairywren (Malurus melanocephalus), or red-backed wren, is a species of passerine bird in the Australasian wren family, Maluridae. It is endemic to Australia and can be found near rivers and coastal areas along the northern and eastern coastlines from the Kimberley in the northwest to the Hunter Region in New South Wales. The male adopts a striking breeding plumage, with a black head, upperparts and tail, and a brightly coloured red back and brown wings. The female has brownish upperparts and paler underparts. The male in eclipse plumage and the juvenile resemble the female. Some males remain in non-breeding plumage while breeding. Two subspecies are recognised; the nominate M. m. melanocephalus of eastern Australia has a longer tail and orange back, and the short-tailed M. m. cruentatus from northern Australia has a redder back. The red-backed fairywren mainly eats insects, and supplements its diet with seed and small fruit. The preferred habitat is heathland and savannah, particularly where low shrubs and tall grasses provide cover. It can be nomadic in areas where there are frequent bushfires, although pairs or small groups of birds maintain and defend territories year-round in other parts of its range. Groups consist of a socially monogamous pair with one or more helper birds who assist in raising the young. These helpers are progeny that have attained sexual maturity yet remain with the family group for one or more years after fledging. The red-backed fairywren is sexually promiscuous, and each partner may mate with other individuals and even assist in raising the young from such pairings. Older males in breeding plumage are more likely to engage in this behaviour than are those breeding in eclipse plumage. As part of a courtship display, the male wren plucks red petals from flowers and displays them to females. 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. 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. 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. 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. Two subspecies are currently recognised: 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.