[5] More recently, DNA analysis has shown the family to be related to the honeyeaters (Meliphagidae) and the pardalotes (Pardalotidae) in a large superfamily Meliphagoidea.

[6][7] In his 1982 monograph, ornithologist Richard Schodde proposed a northern origin for the chestnut-shouldered fairywren species complex due to the variety of forms in the north and their absence in the southeast of the continent.

[8] Ancestral birds spread south and colonised the southwest during a warmer and wetter period around 2 million years ago at the end of the Pliocene or beginning of the Pleistocene.

Continuing warmer, humid conditions again allowed birds to spread southwards; this group, occupying central southern Australia east to the Eyre Peninsula, became the blue-breasted fairywren.

The males have the least distinctive song of the Australasian wren family; a soft whirring, buzzing trill, usually given from a sheltered vantage point deep within the foliage of shrubby vegetation.

Originally it was thought to only occur in Western Australia, but was later found in the more eastward area, where it was for some time mistaken for one of the many forms of the variegated wren.

The distribution of the species is unusual in that there is a gap in their range of three hundred kilometres; from the head of the Great Australian Bight to their reappearance on Eyre Peninsula.

Blue-breasted wrens are predominantly ground feeders, taking beetles, grubs, ants, weevils flies, wasps and other small invertebrates.