The black-throated robin was described by the Italian zoologist, Tommaso Salvadori, in 1875, from a specimen collected in the Arfak Mountains on the island of New Guinea. He coined the binomial name Megalestes albonotatus. It was moved to the genus Poecilodryas by the English zoologist, Richard Bowdler Sharpe, in 1879. A 2011 molecular phylogenetic study found that the black-throated robin was the most divergent member of Poecilodryas. The species is now the only species placed in the resurrected genus Plesiodryas that had been introduced by the Australian ornithologist, Gregory Mathews, in 1820.