The red-collared widowbird was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1779 in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux from a specimen collected in the Cape of Good Hope region of South Africa.
[2] The bird was also illustrated in a hand-coloured plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text.
[3] Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial name Fringilla ardens in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées.
[4] The red-collared widowbird is now one of 17 species placed in the genus Euplectes that was introduced by the English naturalist William Swainson in 1829.
[5][6] The genus name combines the Ancient Greek eu "fine" or "good" and the Neo-Latin plectes "weaver".
[13] In contrast, females and subadults, like nonbreeding males, are streaky dull brown with a short tail, approximately 4 cm.
While their habitats are varied, they are often found in open grasslands, agricultural areas, clearings in forests, and on slopes with limited tree coverage.
[10] Because they are offering no other gifts, it is very important for the males to establish an exclusive territory at the beginning of the breeding season to ensure successful mating.
[14] Females may gain indirect benefits of picking higher quality males by producing higher-quality offspring, without suffering costs of shared territories.
[12] Tail length explains 47% of the male's reproductive success, indicating the strength of this sexual ornament.
[14] Furthermore, with additional manipulation of badges, males with enlarged red, enlarged orange, and reduced red collars obtained territories, while those with reduced orange and blackened or removed collars failed to establish or maintain territories.
Lastly, males with reduced signals defended smaller territories, had more intruders, and spent more time, thus increased cost, on aggressive interactions.
Collectively, these observations led to the conclusion that redness, and to a lesser degree size, indicate dominance status and fighting ability in male contests.
The long-tailed controls spent less time flying and performing courtship displays and they attracted higher quality and more nesting females compared to short-tailed males.
[19] Additionally, longer tails are aerodynamically costly, hindering flying ability by increasing drag.
They can be found in Kruger National Park, located in South Africa, with a large population of an estimated 2000 individuals.