 The species was once treated as a subspecies of the noisy pitta of eastern Australia, and was also treated as being in a species complex with that species, the elegant pitta and the black-faced pitta, although that arrangement was not universally accepted.According to the 2006 study of the nuclear DNA of the pittas and other Old World suboscines found that its closest relative was the superb pitta of Manus Island off the coast of Papua New Guinea.The same study resulted in the pitta family being split from one genus into three, this species remaining in the genus "Pitta".