[4] The bird was also illustrated in a hand-colored 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.

[5] Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial name Formicarius varius in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées.

Adults of the nominate subspecies G. v. varia have a dark olive forecrown; they have a slate gray crown and nape whose feathers have black tips and pale shafts.

They have white or buffy lores that extend down into a "moustache", dark rufescent olive ear coverts with thin buff streaks, and dull blue gray skin around their eye.

It is highly terrestrial while foraging; it hops, pauses, and dashes to capture prey, sometimes flicking aside leaf litter to expose it.

[10][12] The variegated antpitta's breeding season appears to span at least October to December in most areas though nestlings have been found in June in Amazonian Brazil.

The nest is a large untidy cup made of various plant materials placed on a downed log, atop a stump, on in a crevice in a tree trunk.

[10] IUCN expects that the species will lose 13-14 per cent of suitable habitat within its distribution over three generations (11 years)[1] so that, given the sensitive nature of understory insectivores to fragmentation, the predicted anthropogenic disturbances are likely to reduce its population.