What did Richard Bowdler Sharpe place in the family Muscicapidae?
The splendid fairywren is one of eleven species of the genus Malurus, commonly known as fairywrens, found in Australia and lowland New Guinea. Within the genus it is most closely related to the superb fairywren. These two "blue wrens" are closely related to the purple-crowned fairywren of north-western Australia.Specimens were initially collected at King George Sound, and the splendid fairywren then described as Saxicola splendens by the French naturalists Jean René Constant Quoy and Joseph Paul Gaimard in 1830, three years before John Gould gave it the scientific name of Malurus pectoralis and vernacular name of banded superb-warbler. Though he correctly placed it in the genus Malurus, the specific name of the former authors took priority. The specific epithet is derived from the Latin splendens, which means "shining".
Like other fairywrens, the splendid fairywren is unrelated to the true wren. It was first classified as a member of the Old World flycatcher family Muscicapidae by Richard Bowdler Sharpe, though it was later placed in the warbler family Sylviidae by the same author, before being placed in the newly recognised family Maluridae in 1975. More recently, DNA analysis has shown the family Maluridae to be related to the family Meliphagidae (the honeyeaters), and the family Pardalotidae within a large superfamily, Meliphagoidea.The splendid fairywren is also alternatively named the splendid blue wren.
, the splendid fairywren