The spotted scrubwren (''Sericornis maculatus'') is a

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweig ...

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of ...

native to coastal southern Australia, from

Adelaide Adelaide ( ) is the list of Australian capital cities, capital city of South Australia, the state's largest city and the list of cities in Australia by population, fifth-most populous city in Australia. "Adelaide" may refer to either Greater A ...

westwards to

Shark Bay Shark Bay ( Malgana: ''Gathaagudu'', "two waters") is a World Heritage Site in the Gascoyne region of Western Australia. The http://www.environment.gov.au/heritage/places/world/shark-bay area is located approximately north of Perth, on the ...

in Western Australia. It was formerly considered

conspecific Biological specificity is the tendency of a characteristic such as a behavior or a biochemical variation to occur in a particular species. Biochemist Linus Pauling stated that "Biological specificity is the set of characteristics of living organ ...

with the

white-browed scrubwren The white-browed scrubwren (''Sericornis frontalis'') is a passerine bird found on the New England Tablelands and coastal areas of Australia. Placed in the family Pardalotidae in the Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy, this has met with opposition and i ...

, and is known to hybridize with that species where their ranges overlap in the Adelaide area. Genetic analysis in a 2018 study of the family found that this taxon was more divergent from the white-browed scrubwren than the

Tasmanian ) , nickname = , image_map = Tasmania in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of Tasmania in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdi ...

Atherton scrubwren The Atherton scrubwren (''Sericornis keri'') is a bird species. Placed in the family Pardalotidae in the Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy, this has met with opposition and indeed is now known to be wrong; they rather belong to the independent family Ac ...

s and hence proposed its reclassification as a species. It was reclassified as a species in 2019.

Taxonomy

''Sericornis maculatus'' includes the following subspecies:Gill F, D Donsker & P Rasmussen (Eds). 2020. IOC World Bird List (v10.2). doi : 10.14344/IOC.ML.10.2. * ''S. m. ashbyi'' - Mathews, 1912 * ''S. m. mellori'' - Mathews, 1912 * ''S. m. maculatus'' - Gould, 1847 * ''S. m. balstoni'' - Ogilvie-Grant, 1909

References

Sericornis Birds of Western Australia Birds described in 1847 Birds of South Australia {{Acanthizidae-stub