White-flanked Antwren

About the White-flanked Antwren

The white-flanked antwren (Myrmotherula axillaris) is a species of bird in subfamily Thamnophilinae of family Thamnophilidae, the "typical antbirds". It is found from Honduras to Panama in Central America, in every mainland South American country except Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay, and on Trinidad.

The white-flanked antwren was described by the French ornithologist Louis Pierre Vieillot in 1817 and given the binomial name Myrmothera axillaris. The white-flanked antwren's taxonomy is unsettled. The International Ornithological Committee (IOC) and BirdLife International's Handbook of the Birds of the World assign it these five subspecies:

M. a. albigula Lawrence, 1865 M. a. melaena (Sclater, PL, 1857) M. a. heterozyga Zimmer, JT, 1932 M. a. axillaris (Vieillot, 1817) M. a. fresnayana (d'Orbigny, 1835) The Clements taxonomy adds a sixth subspecies, M. a. luctuosa, that the other two systems treat as a separate species, the silvery-flanked antwren (M. luctuosa). The North and South American Classification Committees of the American Ornithological Society also include the silvery-flanked taxon within the white-flanked antwren. Clements does recognize... Wikipedia →