Museum that had been collected by John Leadbeater near the Murray River differed in its plumage from the typical spotted pardalote. The director of the museum, Gerard Krefft, lent the specimen to Ramsay to describe, which he did as Pardalotus chrysoprymnus in a manuscript on 10 December 1866. Krefft advised him that Leadbeater was pushing for the species to be named after him, hence the paper was read but not published in London at a meeting of the Zoological Society of London on 28 February 1867. Meanwhile, Professor Frederick McCoy of the National Museum of Natural History and Geology in Melbourne also published a description of the species from a specimen collected near Swan Hill, in The Australasian newspaper on 29 December 1866, which was formally described on 1 March 1867. McCoy named it Pardalotus xanthopygus, or yellow-backed diamondbird. Ramsay suspected that discussion of his description prompted McCoy to publish his own description; however, McCoy countered that they had been aware it was a separate species for some time. In any case, McCoy's description stood and Ramsay's was consigned to synonymy. In a 1983 paper, Lester Short and colleagues noted the similarity of plumage and calls between the two taxa and occurrence of hybrid specimens from Victoria where the two forms overlapped. John Woinarski found that around Bendigo (where both taxa occur), more pairs appeared to contain members of both forms than not. Western Australian ornithologist Julian Ford felt evidence of hybridization in Western Australia was lacking and also wondered whether land clearing and habitat alteration had promoted hybridization in southeastern Australia. In their 1999 Directory of Australian Birds, Richard Schodde and Ian Mason relegated the yellow-rumped pardalote to subspecies status on account of the intermediate characteristics of subspecies militaris and the widespread hybridization in southeastern Australia. They felt Ford's evidence for lack of interbreeding in Western and South Australia was not strong, but conceded fieldwork in Western Australia was needed. The Wet Tropics spotted pardalote (Pardalotus punctatus militaris) is found in coastal central-northern Queensland. It has features in common with both other subspecies. Description Weighing around , the spotted pardalote is long. The adult male of the nominate subspecies has grey-brown upperparts with numerous paler buff spots, a black crown, wings and tail all with white spots, white eyebrows and reddish rump. The underparts are pale-buff-cinnamon, darkening to a more ochre at the breast, with a demarcated yellow throat