The white-bellied whipbird (Psophodes leucogaster), also called the Mallee whipbird, is a species of bird in the family Psophodidae. It is endemic to southern Australia. It had not been seen or heard in Victoria for 40 years until 2022 when a recording of its song was made in Big Desert Wilderness Park.[1]
Taxonomy
The species was formerly considered as a subspecies of Psophodes nigrogularis, so shared the common name of "western whipbird". The Clements Checklist refers to this species with the common name western whipbird (white-bellied) to distinguish it from P. nigrogularis (black-throated).[2]
The white-bellied whipbird was described by the Australian ornithologists Frank Howe and John Ross in 1933.[3] It was split from the black-throated whipbird (formerly the western whipbird) based on a comparison of mitochondrial DNA sequences published in 2017.[4]
^Howe, Frank Ernest; Ross, John Alexander (1933). "On the occurrence of Psophodes nigrogularis in Victoria". Emu. 32 (3): 133–148 [147]. Bibcode:1933EmuAO..32..133H. doi:10.1071/mu932133.
