 The families to which the Malagasy warblers were formerly assigned—Pycnonotidae (bulbuls) and even more so 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 cytochrome "b" and 16S rRNA as well as nDNA RAG-1 and RAG-2 exon sequence data, that the long-proposed grouping was accepted.The family contains 11 species divided into 8 genera.