Sylviidae

Sylviidae is a family of passerine birds that includes the genus Sylvia, and the closely related genus Curruca, formerly included in Sylvia. They are found in Eurasia and Africa, with the greatest diversity in the Mediterranean region.

Taxonomy and systematics

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.