The typical warblers are small

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweig ...

s belonging to the

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

''Sylvia'' in the "Old World warbler" (or sylviid warbler)

family Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Idea ...

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 Sylvii ...

.Del Hoyo, J.; Elliot, A., & Christie, D. (editors). (2006). ''

Handbook of the Birds of the World The ''Handbook of the Birds of the World'' (HBW) is a multi-volume series produced by the Spanish publishing house Lynx Edicions in partnership with BirdLife International. It is the first handbook to cover every known living species of bird. ...

''. Volume 11: Old World Flycatchers to Old World Warblers. Lynx Edicions. . There are 7 species in the genus.Helbig, A. J. (2001). The characteristics of the genus: Phylogeny and biogeography of the genus ''Sylvia''. Pages 24–28 in: Shirihai, H., Gargallo, G., Helbig, A. J., & Harris, A. ''Sylvia Warblers''. Helm Identification Guides Jønsson, K. A. & Fjeldså, J. (2006). A phylogenetic supertree of oscine passerine birds (Aves: Passeri). '' Zool. Scripta'' 35 (2): 149–186. (HTML abstract) Typical warblers occur in the

temperate In geography, the temperate climates of Earth occur in the middle latitudes (23.5° to 66.5° N/S of Equator), which span between the tropics and the polar regions of Earth. These zones generally have wider temperature ranges throughout ...

tropical The tropics are the regions of Earth surrounding the Equator. They are defined in latitude by the Tropic of Cancer in the Northern Hemisphere at N and the Tropic of Capricorn in the Southern Hemisphere at S. The tropics are also referred to ...

regions of

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

, western and central

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an are ...

, and

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

, with the highest species diversity centred on the

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on ...

. They are strongly built, with stouter legs and a slightly thicker bill than many other

warbler Various Passeriformes (perching birds) are commonly referred to as warblers. They are not necessarily closely related to one another, but share some characteristics, such as being fairly small, vocal, and insectivorous. Sylvioid warblers The ...

s. The

plumage Plumage ( "feather") is a layer of feathers that covers a bird and the pattern, colour, and arrangement of those feathers. The pattern and colours of plumage differ between species and subspecies and may vary with age classes. Within species, ...

is in varying shades of grey and brown, usually darker above and paler below, with bluish or pinkish tones in several species; several also have orange-brown or

rufous Rufous () is a color that may be described as reddish-brown or brownish-red, as of rust or oxidised iron. The first recorded use of ''rufous'' as a color name in English was in 1782. However, the color is also recorded earlier in 1527 as a dia ...

fringed wing feathers. The tail is square-ended in most, slightly rounded in a few, and in several species has white sides. Many of the species show some

sexual dimorphism Sexual dimorphism is the condition where the sexes of the same animal and/or plant species exhibit different morphological characteristics, particularly characteristics not directly involved in reproduction. The condition occurs in most an ...

, with distinctive male and female

s, with the males in many having black or bright grey on the heads, replaced by brown, brownish-grey or similar dusky colours in females; about a third of the species also have a conspicuous red eye ring in males. Species breeding in cool temperate regions are strongly migratory, while most of those in warmer regions are partially migratory or resident. They are active warblers usually associated with open woodland, scrub, hedges or shrubs. Their diet is largely insectivorous, though several species also eat fruit extensively, mainly small berries such as

elder An elder is someone with a degree of seniority or authority. Elder or elders may refer to: Positions Administrative * Elder (administrative title), a position of authority Cultural * North American Indigenous elder, a person who has and ...

and

ivy ''Hedera'', commonly called ivy (plural ivies), is a genus of 12–15 species of evergreen climbing or ground-creeping woody plants in the family Araliaceae, native to western, central and southern Europe, Macaronesia, northwestern Africa and ...

, particularly from late summer to late winter; one species (blackcap) also frequently takes a wide variety of human-provided foods on birdtables in winter.

Taxonomy and systematics

The genus ''Sylvia'' was introduced in 1769 by the Italian naturalist

Giovanni Antonio Scopoli Giovanni Antonio Scopoli (sometimes Latinized as Johannes Antonius Scopolius) (3 June 1723 – 8 May 1788) was an Italian physician and naturalist. His biographer Otto Guglia named him the "first anational European" and the " Linnaeus of the A ...

. Scopoli did not specify a

type species In zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specim ...

but this was designated as the

Eurasian blackcap The Eurasian blackcap (''Sylvia atricapilla''), usually known simply as the blackcap, is a common and widespread typical warbler. It has mainly olive-grey upperparts and pale grey underparts, and differences between the five subspecies are sm ...

(''Sylvia atricapilla'') by

Charles Lucien Bonaparte Charles Lucien Jules Laurent Bonaparte, 2nd Prince of Canino and Musignano (24 May 1803 – 29 July 1857), was a French naturalist and ornithologist. Lucien and his wife had twelve children, including Cardinal Lucien Bonaparte. Life and career ...

in 1828. The genus name is from

Modern Latin New Latin (also called Neo-Latin or Modern Latin) is the revival of Literary Latin used in original, scholarly, and scientific works since about 1500. Modern scholarly and technical nomenclature, such as in zoological and botanical taxonomy a ...

''silvia'', a woodland sprite, related to ''silva'' meaning "a wood". The typical warblers are now known to form a major lineage in a

clade A clade (), also known as a monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that are monophyletic – that is, composed of a common ancestor and all its lineal descendants – on a phylogenetic tree. Rather than the English ter ...

containing also the parrotbills and some

taxa In biology, a taxon (back-formation from ''taxonomy''; plural taxa) is a group of one or more populations of an organism or organisms seen by taxonomists to form a unit. Although neither is required, a taxon is usually known by a particular nam ...

formerly considered to be

Old World babbler The Old World babblers or Timaliidae are a family of mostly Old World passerine birds. They are rather diverse in size and coloration, but are characterised by soft fluffy plumage. These are birds of tropical areas, with the greatest variety in S ...

s. The other "Old World warblers" have been moved to their own families, entirely redelimiting the

. A

molecular phylogenetic Molecular phylogenetics () is the branch of phylogeny that analyzes genetic, hereditary molecular differences, predominantly in DNA sequences, to gain information on an organism's evolutionary relationships. From these analyses, it is possible to ...

study using

mitochondrial A mitochondrion (; ) is an organelle found in the cells of most Eukaryotes, such as animals, plants and fungi. Mitochondria have a double membrane structure and use aerobic respiration to generate adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which is used t ...

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 Edward Dickinson (January 1, 1803 – June 16, 1874) was an American politician from Massachusetts. He is also known as the father of the poet Emily Dickinson; their family home in Amherst, the Dickinson Homestead, is a museum dedicated to her. ...

and

Leslie Christidis Leslie Christidis (born 30 May 1959), also simply known as Les Christidis, is an Australian ornithologist. His main research field is the evolution and systematics of birds. He has been director of Southern Cross University National Marine Science ...

in the fourth edition of ''

Howard and Moore Complete Checklist of the Birds of the World The ''Howard and Moore Complete Checklist of the Birds of the World'' is a book by Richard Howard and Alick Moore which presents a list of the bird species of the world. It was the first single-volume world bird list to include subspecies names, ...

'', chose to split the genus and moved most of the species into a resurrected genus ''Curruca'' retaining only the

and the

garden warbler The garden warbler (''Sylvia borin'') is a common and widespread small bird that breeds in most of Europe and in the Palearctic to western Siberia. It is a plain, long-winged and long-tailed typical warbler with brown upperparts and dull whit ...

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 The British Ornithologists' Union (BOU) aims to encourage the study of birds ("ornithology") and around the world, in order to understand their biology and to aid their conservation. The BOU was founded in 1858 by Professor Alfred Newton, Henr ...

on the grounds that "a split into two genera would unnecessarily destabilize nomenclature and results in only a minor increase in phylogenetic information content."

Extant species

The genus as currently circumscribed includes the following species: *

''Sylvia atricapilla'' *

Garden warbler The garden warbler (''Sylvia borin'') is a common and widespread small bird that breeds in most of Europe and in the Palearctic to western Siberia. It is a plain, long-winged and long-tailed typical warbler with brown upperparts and dull whit ...

''Sylvia borin'' * Dohrn's warbler ''Sylvia dohrni'' *

Abyssinian catbird The Abyssinian catbird or juniper babbler (''Sylvia galinieri'') is a species of bird in the family Sylviidae. (It is unrelated to other birds with the common name catbird). It is endemic to Ethiopia where it is found in highland forest and scru ...

''Sylvia galinieri'' *

Bush blackcap The bush blackcap (''Sylvia nigricapillus'') is a species of bird in the family Sylviidae. It is endemic to South Africa and Eswatini. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist montane forests and subtropical or tropical high-altitu ...

''Sylvia nigricapillus'' * African hill babbler ''Sylvia abyssinica'' *

Rwenzori hill babbler The Rwenzori hill babbler (''Sylvia atriceps'') is a species of passerine bird in the family Sylviidae that is found in Africa. The Rwenzori hill babbler was described by the English zoologist Richard Bowdler Sharpe in 1902 and given the binomi ...

''Sylvia atriceps''

References

External links

Typical warbler videos
on the Internet Bird Collection {{Authority control Taxa named by Giovanni Antonio Scopoli

Taxonomy and systematics

Extant species

References

Further reading

External links