Dot-backed Antbird

The dot-backed antbird is 10 to 11.5 cm (3.9 to 4.5 in) long and weighs 11 to 13 g (0.39 to 0.46 oz). Adult males have a dark rufous-brown crown, nape, and mantle with a white patch between their scapulars. Their back and rump are black with large white feather tips. Their flight feathers are dark brown with wide rufous-brown edges and their wing coverts black with wide white to pale buff tips. Their tail is black with white feather tips. Their face is mostly white; their throat and the lower sides of their neck are black. Their underparts are mostly white with heavy black spots across the breast and along the sides. Their lower belly and undertail coverts have a buffy-olive tinge. "H. p. subochraceous" has more yellow-brown upperparts and a more ochraceous belly, though these colors are at the end of a range rather than completed distinct. Adult females are overall paler than males, with pale buff wing covert tips, a white throat with a black line above it, and a buffy belly.

The dot-backed antbird is found in southern Venezuela, southern and far eastern Colombia, eastern Ecuador, northeastern and southeastern Peru, northern and eastern Bolivia, and western and southern Amazonian Brazil. Though some sources also place it in Guyana or French Guiana, the South American Classification Committee of the American Ornithological Society and the Clements taxonomy do not recognized any records in those countries. The dot-backed antbird inhabits the understorey of lowland evergreen forest, primarily blackwater várzea forest and also swampy areas, the edges of oxbow lakes, and in transitional forest along small watercourses. In elevation it reaches 300 m (1,000 ft) in Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador.

The dot-backed antbird feeds primarily on a variety insects and probably also spiders. They forage as individuals, pairs, and small family groups and mostly within about 4 m (13 ft) of the ground and seldom with mixed-species feeding flocks. They hop among branches, typically in semi-open parts of the understorey, and take prey with sallies from a perch to the ground and by gleaning and lunging for prey on leaves, twigs, and branches. They occasionally attend army ant swarms as the ants traverse their territory.