page_title: Himalayan shrike-babbler
section_title: Taxonomy
hierarchical_section_title: Himalayan shrike-babbler / Taxonomy
caption_attribution_description: English: The species Himalayan Shrike-babbler had been photographed from Neora Valley National Park in West Bengal, India on 14.04.2016.
context_page_description: The Himalayan shrike-babbler is a bird species found in the western Himalayas that belongs to the shrike-babbler group. The genus was once considered to be an aberrant Old World babbler and placed in the family Timaliidae until molecular phylogenetic studies showed them to be closely related to the vireos of the New World, leading to their addition in the family Vireonidae. Males and females have distinctive plumages, with the males being all black about with a cinnamon-rufous tertial patch and a distinctive white stripe running from behind the eye. The underside is whitish with some pinkish buff on the flanks. Females have a greyish head, lack the white stripe and have the upperparts and wings with greens, yellow and chestnut. The species is part of a cryptic species complex that was earlier considered as one species, white-browed shrike-babbler with several subspecies.
context_section_description: The taxonomic history of this species is complex. It was originally described by Nicholas Aylward Vigors in 1831 who described the bird based on a specimen from Murree in Pakistan. He called it Lanius erythropterus and the species was later moved out of the genus Lanius used only for true shrikes and placed in the genus Pteruthius as P. erythropterus. In 1951, Koelz described a new subspecies from Nagaland under the name of Pteruthius erythropterus validirostris. In 1960, Biswamoy Biswas noted that the name Lanius erythropterus was "preoccupied" or clashing with an earlier name used by Shaw in 1809 for a different species and he therefore suggested that the western Himalayan species should be renamed as a subspecies ripleyi after elevating Koelz's name for the eastern Himalayan form to the rank of a species. Temminck described a similar and related species from Java in 1835 as Allotrius flaviscapis and this too was moved to the genus Pteruthius. The subspecies validirostris, which then included ripleyi, along with many other forms in the region were lumped as subspecies of Pteruthius flaviscapis by Ernst Mayr and R.A. Paynter in their taxonomic treatment in 1964. This was followed by most regional works such as the Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan by Salim Ali and Dillon S. Ripley. In 2008, a study of the Pteruthius group found that the relationships within the groups here were more complex than earlier thought and one of the findings was that the subspecies validirostris of the eastern Himalayas was more closely related to the forms found further to the east in Southeast Asia and far more distant to the form in the western Himalayas. This led to the elevation of the western form as Pteruthius ripleyi with validirostris being made a subspecies of Pteruthius aeralatus Blyth's shrike-babbler.
caption: Male Blyth's shrike-babbler (P. aeralatus validirostris) from Neora Valley National Park
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