White-eared honeyeater
species of bird
The white-eared honeyeater (Nesoptilotis leucotis) is a medium-sized honeyeater found in Australia. It is a member of the family Meliphagidae (honeyeaters and Australian chats) which has 190 recognised species with about half of them found in Australia. This makes them members of the most diverse family of birds in Australia. White-eared honeyeaters are easily identifiable by their olive-green body, black head and white ear-patch.
Taxonomy
The white-eared honeyeater was first described by English ornithologist John Latham in 1801 as Turdus leucotis. It has been reclassified several times and was previously named Lichenostomus leucotis and Ptilotis leucotis torringtoni.
The white-eared honeyeater was previously placed in the genus Lichenostomus, but it was moved to Nesoptilotis after a molecular phylogenetic analysis, published in 2011, showed that the original genus was polyphyletic. It is a sister taxon to the yellow-throated honeyeater (N. flavicollis) that occurs in Tasmania, and they belong to a clade that contains the genera Entomyzon, Melithreptus, and Foulehaio.
There are two recognised subspecies: the nominate subspecies Nesoptilotis leucotis leucotis is found from eastern central Queensland through New South Wales and Victoria to southeastern South Australia; the subspecies N. l. novaenorciae is found in southwestern Western Australia and the Eyre Peninsula of South Australia.
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The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as species of bird. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 5, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q27075225. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1801 and 2011.
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This entry incorporates text from “White-eared honeyeater” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.