The
scientific name Sylviidae was introduced by the English zoologist
William Elford Leach (as Sylviadæ) in a guide to the contents of the
British Museum published in 1820. The family became 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 the Sylviidae warblers are more closely related to the
Old World babblers than other birds also called warblers 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. They also moved the
African hill babbler and
Dohrn's thrush-babbler into
Sylvia. The split was at first not accepted 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", but then later accepted in 2021. }} }}
List of species The family Sylviidae has undergone several revisions since the above phylogeny was published. As of August 2024, the
International Ornithological Committee (IOC) recognizes these 32 species divided among two genera: This list is presented according to the IOC taxonomic sequence and can also be sorted alphabetically by common name and binomial. ==Description==