Western Woodhaunter Automolus virgatus is split from Eastern (formerly Striped) Woodhaunter A. subulatus (Clements 2007:280)

Summary: The Western Woodhaunter of Central America and northwestern South America is now considered a distinct species from the Eastern Woodhaunter of the western and central Amazon and Orinoco regions.

Details: Automolus virgatus was originally described as a species in great detail, though without explicit comparison with A. subulatus (Lawrence 1867), with which it has long been considered conspecific (Peters 1951; but see Gill and Wright 2006, IOC v.1.0). However, major vocal differentiation between the A. virgatus and A. subulatus groups (Ridgely and Tudor 1994, Boesman 2016 [No. 90]) with congruent genetic divergence (Schultz et al. 2017) is considered by WGAC and Clements et al. (2023) to be strong evidence for the two-species treatment enacted by del Hoyo and Collar (2016). A 2003 SACC proposal (https://www.museum.lsu.edu/~Remsen/SACCprop40.htm) to split A. virgatus did not pass owing to insufficient published data.

English names: The English names distinguish between the regions inhabited by the two species and align with Gill and Wright (2006, IOC v.1.0).