White-throated oxylabes

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.^[3] Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature.^[4] 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 genus Motacilla and coined the binomial name Motacilla madagascariensis.^[5] 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.^[6][7] The genus name is from Ancient Greek oxulabēs meaning "quick at seizing".^[8] The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised.^[7]

In 2013, genetic studies determined that the Bluntschli's vanga (also known as short-toed nuthatch-vanga), a species described in 1996 from two specimens collected in 1931, was actually this species. The specimens were both juveniles in a poorly known brown plumage.^[9]

The white-throated oxylabes is a large warbler 17–18 cm (6.7–7.1 in) in length. It has short wings, long legs and a long stout bill. The upperparts are dark olive-brown with a rufous top and side of head. It has a narrow white supercilium and a white chin and throat. The underparts are dark brown. The sexes are alike.^[10]