See text The white-eyes are a family, Zosteropidae, of small passerine birds native to tropical, subtropical and temperate Sub-Saharan Africa, southern and eastern Asia, and Australasia.

[5][6] The white-eyes were long considered a distinct family Zosteropidae because they are rather homogeneous in morphology and ecology, leading to little adaptive radiation and divergence.

It differs much in appearance from the typical white-eyes, Zosterops, but is approached by some Micronesian taxa; its color pattern is fairly unusual save the imperfect white eye-ring.

According to her results, the white-eyes were likely to form a clade also containing the yuhinas, which were until then placed with the Old World babblers, a large "wastebin" family.

[8] Previous molecular studies (e.g. Sibley & Ahlquist 1990, Barker et al. 2002) had together with the morphological evidence tentatively placed white-eyes as the Timaliidae's closest relatives already.

But some questions remained, mainly because the white-eyes are all very similar birds in habitus and habits, while the Old World babblers are very diverse (because, as we now know, the group as formerly defined was polyphyletic).

Whether there can be a clear delimitation of a white-eye subfamily or even a young or emerging family is a question that requires a more comprehensive study of both this group and Timaliidae to resolve (Jønsson & Fjeldså 2006).

However, when the review by Jønsson & Fjeldså (2006) was published, no study had tried to propose a phylogeny for the newly defined yuhinas including the white eyes.