Sylviidae

Sylviidae is a family of passerine birds that includes the typical warblers and a number of babblers formerly placed within the Old World babbler family. They are found in Eurasia and Africa.

Sylviidae
Eurasian blackcap (Sylvia atricapilla)
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Passeriformes
Superfamily:	Sylvioidea
Family:	Sylviidae Leach, 1820
Genera
See text

Taxonomy and systematics

The scientific name Sylviidae was coined by the English zoologist William Elford Leach (as Sylviadæ) in a guide to the contents of the British Museum published in 1820.[1][2] Formerly, the family was part of an assemblage known as the Old World warblers and was a wastebin taxon with over 400 species of bird in over 70 genera.[3] Advances in classification, particularly helped with molecular data, have led to the splitting out of several new families from within this group. There is now evidence that these Sylvia "warblers" are more closely related to the Old World babblers than the warblers and thus these birds are better referred to as Sylvia babblers, or just sylvids.[4]

A molecular phylogenetic study using mitochondrial DNA sequence data published in 2011 found that the species in the genus Sylvia formed two distinct clades.[5] Based on these results, the ornithologists Edward Dickinson and Leslie Christidis in the fourth edition of Howard and Moore Complete Checklist of the Birds of the World, chose to split the genus and moved most of the species into a resurrected genus Curruca retaining only the Eurasian blackcap and the garden warbler in Sylvia. In an additional change they moved the African hill babbler and Dohrn's thrush-babbler into Sylvia.[6] The split was not made by the British Ornithologists' Union on the grounds that "a split into two genera would unnecessarily destabilize nomenclature and results in only a minor increase in phylogenetic information content."[7]

List of species

The family includes 34 species divided into 2 genera:[8] This list is presented according to the IOC taxonomic sequence and can also be sorted alphabetically by common name and binomial.

Common name	Binomial name	IOC sequence
Eurasian blackcap	Sylvia atricapilla	1
Garden warbler	Sylvia borin	2
Dohrn's warbler	Sylvia dohrni	3
Abyssinian catbird	Sylvia galinieri	4
Bush blackcap	Sylvia nigricapillus	5
African hill babbler	Sylvia abyssinica	6
Rwenzori hill babbler	Sylvia atriceps	7
Barred warbler	Curruca nisoria	8
Layard's warbler	Curruca layardi	9
Banded parisoma	Curruca boehmi	10
Chestnut-vented warbler	Curruca subcoerulea	11
desert whitethroat	Curruca minula	12
Lesser whitethroat	Curruca curruca	13
Hume's whitethroat	Curruca althaea	14
Brown parisoma	Curruca lugens	15
Yemen warbler	Curruca buryi	16
Arabian warbler	Curruca leucomelaena	17
Western Orphean warbler	Curruca hortensis	18
Eastern Orphean warbler	Curruca crassirostris	19
African desert warbler	Curruca deserti	20
Asian desert warbler	Curruca nana	21
Tristram's warbler	Curruca deserticola	22
Menetries's warbler	Curruca mystacea	23
Rüppell's warbler	Curruca ruppeli	24
Cyprus warbler	Curruca melanothorax	25
Sardinian warbler	Curruca melanocephala	26
Western subalpine warbler	Curruca iberiae	27
Moltoni's warbler	Curruca subalpina	28
Eastern subalpine warbler	Curruca cantillans	29
Common whitethroat	Curruca communis	30
Spectacled warbler	Curruca conspicillata	31
Marmora's warbler	Curruca sarda	32
Dartford warbler	Curruca undata	33
Balearic warbler	Curruca balearica	34

Description

Sylviids are small to medium-sized passerine birds. The bill is generally thin and pointed with bristles at the base. Sylviids have a slender shape and an inconspicuous and mostly plain plumage. The wings have ten primaries, which are rounded and short in non-migratory species.[3]

Distribution and habitat

Most species occur in Asia, and to a lesser extent in Africa. A few range into Europe.

References

1. Leach, William Elford (1820). "Eleventh Room". Synopsis of the Contents of the British Museum (17th ed.). London: British Museum. pp. 66–67. The name of the author is not specified in the document.
2. Bock, Walter J. (1994). History and nomenclature of avian family-group names. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History Issue 222. pp. 152, 245. hdl:2246/830.
3. Bairlein, F.; Bonan, A. "Old World Warblers (Sylviidae)". In del Hoyo, J.; Elliott, A.; Sargatal, J.; Christie, D.A.; de Juana, E. (eds.). Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive. Lynx Edicions. Retrieved 15 December 2016.
4. "SYLVIDS Sylviidae". Bird Families of the World. Retrieved 6 March 2017.
5. Voelker, Gary; Light, Jessica E. (2011). "Palaeoclimatic events, dispersal and migratory losses along the Afro-European axis as drivers of biogeographic distribution in Sylvia warblers". BMC Evolutionary Biology. 11 (163): 163. doi:10.1186/1471-2148-11-163. PMC 3123607. PMID 21672229.
6. Dickinson, E.C.; Christidis, L., eds. (2014). The Howard & Moore Complete Checklist of the Birds of the World, Volume 2: Passerines (4th ed.). Eastbourne, UK: Aves Press. pp. 509–512. ISBN 978-0-9568611-2-2.
7. Sangster, G.; et al. (2016). "Taxonomic recommendations for Western Palearctic birds: 11th report". Ibis. 158 (1): 206–212. doi:10.1111/ibi.12322.
8. Gill, F.; Donsker, D.; Rasmussen, P. (July 2020). "IOC World Bird List (v 10.2)". Retrieved July 15, 2020.