Southern White-fringed Antwren

About the Southern White-fringed Antwren

The southern white-fringed antwren (Formicivora grisea) is an insectivorous bird in subfamily Thamnophilinae of family Thamnophilidae, the "typical antbirds". It is found in Brazil, Colombia, French Guiana, Guyana, Suriname, and Venezuela.

The southern white-fringed antwren was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux in 1775 from a specimen collected in Cayenne, French Guiana. The bird was also illustrated in a hand-colored plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text. Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial name Turdus griseus in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées. The southern white-fringed antwren is now placed in the genus Formicivora that was introduced by the English naturalist William Swainson in 1824. The generic name combines the Latin words formica for "ant" and -vorus "eating" from vorare "to devour". The specific epithet grisea... Wikipedia →