This antshrike has strongly different male and female plumage. It uses dense vegetation along humid forest edges in the eastern Andean foothills.
Males have dense black-and-white barring. Females have chestnut backs, wings, tails, and crowns, with barred underparts.
It occurs in dense vegetation at humid forest edges in the eastern Andean foothills. A specialist species account describes birds moving alone or in pairs through thickets and taking insects and other small prey.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.