Common scale-backed antbird


The common scale-backed antbird is a species of passerine bird in the antbird family, Thamnophilidae. It is found in the Amazon of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela.
Its natural habitat is tropical moist lowland forests. As with other species of antbirds, it regularly follows swarms of army ants as they flush insects and other arthropods out of the leaf litter.
The common scale-backed antbird was described and illustrated by the German ornithologist Jean Cabanis in 1847 and given the binomial name Hypocnemis poecilinotus. The specific epithet is from the Ancient Greek poikilonōtos "with variegated back". It was subsequently included in the genus Hylophylax, but was found to not be closely related to the other species in the genus and was placed in Willisornis. It was briefly placed in Dichropogon, but this name is preoccupied by a genus of asilid flies. It was formerly considered conspecific with the Xingu scale-backed antbird.
There are five subspecies:
In addition to being sexually dimorphic, the plumages of the subspecies are highly variable, leading to speculations that the common scale-backed antbird as presently defined may include more than a single species. Males of all subspecies, and females of some subspecies have white bars on the back, leading to its English name common scale-backed antbird.