Picides is an infraorder of the order

Piciformes Nine families of largely arboreal birds make up the order Piciformes , the best-known of them being the Picidae, which includes the woodpeckers and close relatives. The Piciformes contain about 71 living genera with a little over 450 species, of ...

that includes

woodpecker Woodpeckers are part of the bird family Picidae, which also includes the piculets, wrynecks, and sapsuckers. Members of this family are found worldwide, except for Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand, Madagascar, and the extreme polar regions. ...

s and

honeyguide Honeyguides (family Indicatoridae) are near passerine birds in the order Piciformes. They are also known as indicator birds, or honey birds, although the latter term is also used more narrowly to refer to species of the genus '' Prodotiscus''. Th ...

s. The honeyguides were thought to be closely related to the barbets, as their aerial displays and vocalizations are more similar to each other than either are to woodpeckers. However, phylogenetic analysis has shown that honeyguides and woodpeckers are indeed sister taxa.Moyle, R. G. (2004). Phylogenetics of barbets (Aves: Piciformes) based on nuclear and mitochondrial DNA sequence data. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 30(1), 187-200.

Systematics

Despite having only two families, Picides is an extremely widespread group; the family Picidae is the largest and most widespread in the order Piciformes, containing over 200 species in three subfamilies and being found on all continents except Australia and Antarctica. *Infraorder Picides **Family

Indicatoridae Honeyguides (family Indicatoridae) are near passerine birds in the order Piciformes. They are also known as indicator birds, or honey birds, although the latter term is also used more narrowly to refer to species of the genus ''Prodotiscus''. T ...

(honeyguides) **Family Picidae ***Subfamily

Jynginae The wrynecks (genus ''Jynx'') are a small but distinctive group of small Old World woodpeckers. ''Jynx'' is from the Ancient Greek ''iunx'', the Eurasian wryneck. These birds get their English name from their ability to turn their heads a ...

(wrynecks) ***Subfamily

Picumninae The piculets are a distinctive subfamily, Picumninae, of small woodpeckers which occur mainly in tropical South America, with just three Asian and one African species. Like the true woodpeckers, piculets have large heads, long tongues which the ...

(piculets) ***Subfamily Picinae (woodpeckers)

References

External links

Tree of Life Piciformes
{{Taxonbar, from=Q20817930 Pici (taxon)