Avulavirinae was previously recognized as the genus Avulavirus before being elevated to a subfamily.

The term avula comes from "avian rubula", distinguishing it from rubulaviruses of the subfamily Rubulavirinae due to avulaviruses only infecting birds and translating protein V from an edited RNA transcript.

The most notable avulavirus is the Newcastle disease virus, a strain of Avian orthoavulavirus 1.

Avulaviruses have a hemagglutinin-neuraminidase attachment protein and do not produce a non-structural protein C. Avulaviruses can be separated into distinct serotypes using hemagglutination assay and neuraminidase assay.

[4] Subfamily: Avulavirinae[5] Prior to the subfamily being elevated from genus, members of the genus were known as Avian paramyxovirus, then later as Avian avulavirus, followed by numbers 1 to 19, which designated the species number.