[5] The characteristic features all species share are a plain face with a black proximal stripe and either yellow or white distal plumes across the sides of the neck.

[8] However, when contributing to the Second Official Checklist of the Birds of Australia, the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union rejected Mathews' phylogenic treatment as they did not agree with the formation of so many new genera.

[12][13][14] In 1975 the Australian ornithologist Richard Schodde argued that the criteria used to determine membership in Meliphaga was too broad and that if applied consistently, more than half of the family would be placed in this genus.

The development of molecular analyses resulted in later research which agreed with Schodde's assessment, but while identifying Ptilotula as a clade early techniques were unable to give sufficient weight to warrant a split from Lichenostomus.

[2] Their assessment confirmed the evolutionary relationship Mathews had proposed in 1931, albeit with the inclusion of the fuscous honeyeater (P. fuscus) which he had placed in the monotypic genus Paraptilotis.

[4] Walter Boles described a fossil leg bone found in Riversleigh, Queensland from an as yet unnamed Pliocene species as characteristic of tibias from the Lichenostomus-Meliphaga complex.