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.

Taxonomy and systematics

The scientific name Sylviidae was coined by the English zoologist William Elford Leach in a guide to the contents of the British Museum published in 1820. 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. 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.
A molecular phylogenetic study using mitochondrial DNA sequence data published in 2011 found that the species in the genus Sylvia formed two distinct clades. 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. 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."

List of species

The family includes 34 species divided into 2 genera: This list is presented according to the IOC taxonomic sequence and can also be sorted alphabetically by common name and binomial.
Common nameBinomial nameIOC sequence
Eurasian blackcapSylvia atricapilla1
Garden warblerSylvia borin2
Dohrn's warblerSylvia dohrni3
Abyssinian catbirdSylvia galinieri4
Bush blackcapSylvia nigricapillus5
African hill babblerSylvia abyssinica6
Rwenzori hill babblerSylvia atriceps7
Barred warblerCurruca nisoria8
Layard's warblerCurruca layardi9
Banded parisomaCurruca boehmi10
Chestnut-vented warblerCurruca subcoerulea11
desert whitethroatCurruca minula12
Lesser whitethroatCurruca curruca13
Hume's whitethroatCurruca althaea14
Brown parisomaCurruca lugens15
Yemen warblerCurruca buryi16
Arabian warblerCurruca leucomelaena17
Western Orphean warblerCurruca hortensis18
Eastern Orphean warblerCurruca crassirostris19
African desert warblerCurruca deserti20
Asian desert warblerCurruca nana21
Tristram's warblerCurruca deserticola22
Menetries's warblerCurruca mystacea23
Rüppell's warblerCurruca ruppeli24
Cyprus warblerCurruca melanothorax25
Sardinian warblerCurruca melanocephala26
Western subalpine warblerCurruca iberiae27
Moltoni's warblerCurruca subalpina28
Eastern subalpine warblerCurruca cantillans29
Common whitethroatCurruca communis30
Spectacled warblerCurruca conspicillata31
Marmora's warblerCurruca sarda32
Dartford warblerCurruca undata33
Balearic warblerCurruca balearica34

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.

Distribution and habitat

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