The sakalava weaver was first described by Gustav Hartlaub in 1861, based on a specimen collected by Victor Sganzin during an expedition in 1831-32 on Madagascar. The species epithetsakalava is derived from the Sakalava, whose name means "people of the long valleys". The first English name was given to the bird only in 1891 by James Sibree, who named it Sakalava Weaver-bird. "Sakalava weaver" has been designated the official name by the International Ornithological Committee. Another English name that is sometimes used is Sakalava Fody. Local names in the Malagasy language include fodibeotse, fodisahy, tsiaka, draky and zaky. Based on recent DNA-analysis, the genus Ploceus is almost certainlypolyphyletic. If all species currently included in the genus would remain and the genus would be made monophyletic, it would have to encompass the entire subfamily Ploceinae. The Ploceinae can be divided into two groups. In the first group, the widowbirds and bishops are sister to a clade in which the genera Foudia and Quelea are closest relatives and which further includes the Asiatic species of Ploceus, i.e. P. manyar, P. philippinus, P. benghalensis, P. megarhynchus,. Since Georges Cuvier picked P. philippinus as the type species, these five species would logically remain assigned to the genus Ploceus. Basic to the second group is a clade consisting of both species sofar included in Ploceus that live on Madagascar, P. nelicourvi and P. sakalava, and these are morphologically very distinctive from the remaining species. These two species could in future be assigned to the genus Nelicurvius that was erected by Charles Lucien Bonaparte in 1850, but which was merged with Ploceus later on. This second group further contains the genera Malimbus and Anaplectes, and all remaining Ploceus species.
The adult male has a yellow head and upper breast during the breeding season, with a pale grey belly and light and brown wings with white wing-tips. The male has distinctive red eye-rings and silver bill extending with a 'V' shape into the forehead. The non-breeding male has a dark brown head and pale grey breast, flanked with white. The female has the appearance more of a house sparrow with pale almost white breast and duller slightly pink bill. The female also has a red eye-ring and sometimes small flashes of red around the eye.
Gallery
Ecology and behaviour
Like in other true weaver birds, the roofed nest is woven from strips of grass leaf, but the sakalava weaver also uses strips of palm fond, or thatching and weaving materials collected in villages. The top is woven directly around a branch or it is attached from a short woven stalk. It is shaped like a retort, with a pear-shaped nesting chamber and a long entrance tunnel hanging from the top. The fabric is thin but dense, although less so with the tunnel, that may be slightly transparent and which may also be somewhat wider at both ends.
