Archbold's bowerbird (''Archboldia papuensis'') is a

passerine A passerine () is any bird of the order Passeriformes (; from Latin 'sparrow' and '-shaped') which includes more than half of all bird species. Sometimes known as perching birds, passerines generally have an anisodactyl arrangement of their ...

bird in the bowerbird family

Ptilonorhynchidae Bowerbirds () make up the bird family (biology), family Ptilonorhynchidae. They are renowned for their unique courtship behaviour, where males build a structure and decorate it with sticks and brightly coloured objects in an attempt to attract a ...

that is

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found only in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also foun ...

to highland forests of

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; , fossilized , also known as Papua or historically ) is the List of islands by area, world's second-largest island, with an area of . Located in Melanesia in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is ...

. It is medium-sized, dark grey

songbird A songbird is a bird belonging to the suborder Passeri of the perching birds (Passeriformes). Another name that is sometimes seen as the scientific or vernacular name is Oscines, from Latin ''oscen'', "songbird". The Passeriformes contains 5,00 ...

with brown iris, grey feet and black bill. The male has narrow black scalloping with golden yellow crown feathers. The female is smaller than the male, with yellow patch on the wing and has no crown feathering.

Taxonomy

Archbold's bowerbird was formally described in 1940 by the Canadian zoologist Austin L. Rand from a male specimen collected at an altitude of north of Lake Habbema in the Snow Mountains of

Western New Guinea Western New Guinea, also known as Papua, Indonesian New Guinea, and Indonesian Papua, is the western half of the island of New Guinea, formerly Dutch and granted to Indonesia in 1962. Given the island is alternatively named Papua, the region ...

. Rand erected a new genus, ''Archboldia'', and coined the

binomial name In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, both of which use Latin grammatical forms, altho ...

''Archboldia papuensis''. The genus and common names honour the American zoologist Richard Archbold. A

molecular phylogenetic Molecular phylogenetics () is the branch of phylogeny that analyzes genetic, hereditary molecular differences, predominantly in DNA sequences, to gain information on an organism's evolutionary relationships. From these analyses, it is possible to ...

study by Per Ericson and collaborators published in 2020 found that Archbold's bowerbird was embedded in the genus '' Amblyornis''. Two

subspecies In Taxonomy (biology), biological classification, subspecies (: subspecies) is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics (Morphology (biology), morpholog ...

are recognised: * ''A. p. papuensis''

Rand The RAND Corporation, doing business as RAND, is an American nonprofit global policy think tank, research institute, and public sector consulting firm. RAND engages in research and development (R&D) in several fields and industries. Since the ...

, 1940 – montane central west

* ''A. p. sanfordi''

Mayr Mayr is a German surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Andrea Mayr (born 1979), Austrian female long-distance runner * Ernst Mayr (1904–2005), German American evolutionary biologist * Franz Xaver Mayr (1875–1965), Austrian gastro ...

& Gilliard, 1950 – montane central east

The subspecies ''A. p. sanfordi'', Sanford's bowerbird, has sometimes been treated as a separate species.

Description

The male Archbold's bowerbird has an overall length of and a weight of . The female is slight smaller with a length of and a weight of . The male of the nominate race is dark grey to black with an orange-yellow crest. The bill is black, the legs are blue-grey and the iris is dark brown. The female is dark brown rather than black and lacks a crest. The primary coverts are yellowish producing a patch on the leading edge of the wing. Archbold's bowerbird uses the shed ornamental plumes of the King of Saxony bird-of-paradise to decorate its courtship bower. Archbold's bowerbird is evaluated as

least concern A least-concern species is a species that has been evaluated and categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as not being a focus of wildlife conservation because the specific species is still plentiful in the wil ...

on the

IUCN Red List of Threatened Species The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, also known as the IUCN Red List or Red Data Book, founded in 1964, is an inventory of the global conservation status and extinction risk of biological spe ...

References

External links

BirdLife Species Factsheet
Archbold's bowerbird Birds of Western New Guinea Archbold's bowerbird Taxa named by Austin L. Rand {{passeri-stub