Sylviidae

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.[1][2] 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.[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 other warblers[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. They also moved the African hill babbler and Dohrn's thrush-babbler into Sylvia.[6] The split was 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."[7]

List of species

The family includes 25 species divided into 2 genera:[9] This list is presented according to the IOC taxonomic sequence and can also be sorted alphabetically by common name and binomial.

Genus	Common name	Binomial name	IOC sequence
Sylvia Scopoli, 1769	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
Curruca Bechstein, 1802	Barred warbler	Curruca nisoria	8
	Layard's warbler	Curruca layardi	9
	Banded parisoma	Curruca boehmi	10
	Chestnut-vented warbler	Curruca subcoerulea	11
	Lesser whitethroat	Curruca curruca	13
	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

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]

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