The taxon "blythii" is now usually (e.g. Rasmussen & Anderton, 2005) considered a valid species, the Malabar starling or white-headed myna ("Sturnia blythii"), instead of a subspecies of "Sturnia malabarica". As "S. m. malabarica" only visits the range of "blythii" during the non-breeding period (winter), the two are not known to interbreed. However, a molecular study found the genetic divergence between "S. blythii" not significantly greater (between 0.2% and 0.8%) than between the sisters "S. m. malabarica" of northern India and "S. m. nemoricola" of Burma and Vietnam.