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The red-backed fairywren (''Malurus melanocephalus'') is a species of passerine bird in the 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 and upperparts and tail, and 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 form ''melanocephalus'' of eastern Australia has a longer tail and orange back, and the short-tailed form ''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. ==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.〔Rowley & Russell ''(Families of the World:Fairywrens and Grasswrens)'', p. 3〕 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.〔Schodde R ''(The fairy-wrens: a monograph of the Maluridae)'', p. 31〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Red-backed fairywren」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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