The silvered antbird (Sclateria naevia) is a passerine bird in the subfamily Thamnophilinae of the family Thamnophilidae, the "typical antbirds." It is found in Trinidad and every mainland South American country except Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay.
Taxonomy and systematics
The silvered antbird was formally described in 1788 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with the nuthatches in the genus Sitta and coined the binomial name Sitta naevia. Gmelin based his description of the "wall-creeper of Surinam," described and illustrated in 1764 by the English naturalist George Edwards in his Gleanings of Natural History. Edwards' specimen was preserved in spirits. It had been presented to the physician John Fothergill. The silvered antbird is now the only species in the genus Sclateria, introduced in 1899 by the American ornithologist Harry C. Oberholser. The genus name was chosen to honor the ornithologist Philip Sclater.
The silvered antbird has these four subspecies:
Males of subspecies S. n. argentata have almost white underparts with faint light gray mottling on the breast and flanks and a paler gray crissum than the nominate. Females have grayer upperparts than the nominate; their underparts vary from white with buffy brown sides and vent area to deep buff with browner sides and vent. S. n. toddi is intermediate between the nominate and argentata. S. n. diaphora males have small white dots, rather than white tips, on their wing coverts, and mostly gray underparts with a few thin white streaks on the breast. Females have ochraceous tawny underparts with little to no mottling.
Distribution and habitat
The subspecies of the silvered antbird are found thus: