Bernieridae
| Malagasy warblers | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| The long-billed bernieria (Bernieria madagascariensis) was formerly placed in the Pycnonotidae | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Passeriformes |
| Suborder: | Passeri |
| Superfamily: | Sylvioidea |
| Family: |
Bernieridae Cibois, David, Gregory & Pasquet, 2010 |
| Genera | |
|
Bernieria |
|
Bernieria
Crossleyia
Cryptosylvicola
Hartertula
Oxylabes
Randia
Thamnornis
Xanthomixis
The Malagasy warblers are a newly validated clade of songbirds. They were formally named Bernieridae in 2010. The family currently consists of eleven species (in eight genera) of small forest birds. These birds are all endemic to Madagascar.
The monophyly of this group has been proposed as early as 1934 (Salomonsen 1934). But the traditional assignments of these birds were maintained, mistaken by their convergent evolution and the lack of dedicated research. The families to which the Malagasy warblers were formerly assigned—Pycnonotidae (bulbuls) but especially Timaliidae (Old World babblers) and the Old World warbler—were used as "wastebin taxa", uniting unrelated lineages that were somewhat similar ecologically and morphologically.
It was not until the analysis of mtDNA and 16S rRNA (Cibois et al. 1999, 2001) as well as nDNA RAG-1 and RAG-2 exon (Beresford et al. 2005) sequence data, that the long-proposed grouping was accepted.
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