Based on these, English ornithologist John Latham described it as three separate species in 1801. He based the description of Certhia sanguinolenta on an immature male moulting into adult plumage with incomplete red colouration,[2][3] calling it the sanguineous creeper. In the same publication he described Certhia dibapha, the cochineal creeper, and C. erythropygia, the red-rumped creeper.[4] English naturalist James Francis Stephens called it Meliphaga sanguinea in 1826 as a replacement name for Latham's Certhia sanguinolenta.[5][6] John Gould determined Latham's three names to be the one species in 1843,[7] adopting the first-written binomial name as the valid one and relegating the others to synonymy,[3][5] though the name Myzomela dibapha was occasionally used,[8] particularly in New Caledonia.[3] In 1990, Ian McAllan proposed that the first drawing did not confirm the species identity and proposed the name Myzomela dibapha to hence be the oldest validly published name;[9] however, Richard Schodde countered in 1992 that the drawing of an immature male could not be of any other species, meaning that M. sanguinolenta should stand.