Family MALURIDAE Swainson, 1831

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Family MALURIDAE Swainson, 1831

Compiler and date details

August 2021 - ABRS, updated

R. Schodde & I.J. Mason, CSIRO Australian National Wildlife Collection, Canberra, ACT, Australia; updated and upgraded by N.W. Longmore, Museum Victoria, 2006

Maluridae Swainson, 1831.

Introduction

Malurids are a large polyphyletic family with 28 species in five genera, distributed throughout Australia, New Guinea and a few of the extreme eastern Indonesian Archipelago islands (Schodde 1982; Dickinson 2003). Australia has some 22 species in three distinct genera (79% of the world species), represented by 50 ultrataxa. Many of these are endemic to Australia and include species as diverse as fairy-wrens, grasswrens, and emu-wrens. All Australian members of the family have long tail feathers — this is especially evident in Stipiturus species where the remiges are reduced in number to six and lack barbules, thus having a loose filamentous appearance. Males in the genus Malurus have two adult plumage variations. In this genus one form is similar to that of the female and is normally associated with non-breeding and subadult birds. The other is a combination of vibrant blues, chestnut, red or purple; this plumage is concurrent with breeding although not necessary to conduce breeding success. Often adult, non-breeding males may form part of a larger group that has a dominant breeding male present.

Most malurids are local nomads, usually occurring in family groups, but often, in the fairy-wrens, in larger foraging groups. Within Australia the family occupies habitats that vary from wet forests and woodlands to shrublands and heaths, from coastal situations to the arid interior. The many species are either terrestrial, scansorial, or arboreal, or a combination of these in their feeding habits, gathering their food through gleaning, hawking, probing or snatching to procure their insectivorous prey. They are gregarious; members of the genus Malurus often join small foraging flocks of mixed species while feeding. Others show preference for pairing or small family associations only.

Nesting is usually accomplished in a rather unusual manner in at least the one genus, Malurus — a dominant pair are often assisted by other members of the family group. These helpers are usually offspring of previous nestings (Rowley 1965; Rowley & Russell 1997). All construct domed nests of grasses, lined within by finer grasses and feathers. The nests are secreted within dense bushes and shrubs, often low to the ground. A normal clutch of eggs usually numbers three but varies from a single egg to three. Eggs are small, often creamy white with slight variation in base colour, and are marked with either a cap or corona of fine dots or spots of pale brown to reddish brown or grey; some are well marked over their entire surface.

Diagnosis

'At the base of the skull are enlarged tympanic chambers ('bullae') formed from exoccipital and parasphenoid bones; their function is unclear but it may be to hear low frequency sounds made by approaching predators (Schodde 1982; Parker 1982). In the palate, the maxillo-palatine processes are long and strap-like, and extend over a 'normal' bifidly horned, honeyeater-like vomer. Unlike their usual form in honeyeaters, however, the fossae at the head of the humerus are reduced to two, shallow and unpneumatised, acanthizid-like furrows.'