Oxylabes

Taxonomy

In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description and an illustration of the white-throated oxylabes in the third volume of his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected on the island of Madagascar. He used the French name Le rossignol de Madagascar and the Latin name Luscinia madagascariensis. Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. When in 1789 the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin revised and expanded Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae he included the white-throated oxylabes based on Brisson's description. He placed it with the wagtails in the genusMotacilla and coined the binomial nameMotacilla madagascariensis. The white-throated oxylabes is now the only species placed in the genus Oxylabes that was introduced in 1870 by the English ornithologist Richard Bowdler Sharpe. The genus name is from Ancient Greekoxulabēs meaning "quick at seizing". The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised.