This genus has representatives across most of Eurasia and one species, the common or European starling, has been introduced to North America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.

The Sturnus starlings are terrestrial species; they walk rather than hop, and have modifications to the skull and its muscles for open-bill probing.

This is facilitated by the head adaptations mentioned above, which enable the birds to probe with the bill open, closing it to secure prey items.

The genus Sturnus was introduced in 1758 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae.

[3] The common and spotless starlings are particularly closely related, and interbreed to some extent where their ranges overlap in southwestern France and northeastern Spain.

The non-migratory spotless starling may be descended from a population of ancestral S. vulgaris that survived in an Iberian refugium during an Ice Age retreat.

The genus Sturnus uses three major mechanisms in their complex mating system: parental care, differential allocation, and (arguably) the sexy son hypothesis.

In addition, females of the Sturnus vulgaris species see a decrease in their fitness if the male is polygynous because there is no assistance in nestling feeding.

One counter-argument is that a female who chooses a polygynous mate, for a chance that her sons grow up to be successful and pass her genes on, would be risking her own health.