Nine families of largely arboreal birds make up the

order Order, ORDER or Orders may refer to: * Categorization, the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated, and understood * Heterarchy, a system of organization wherein the elements have the potential to be ranked a number of d ...

Piciformes , the best-known of them being the Picidae, which includes the woodpeckers and close relatives. The Piciformes contain about 71 living

genera Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nomenclat ...

with a little over 450 species, of which the

Picidae 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. M ...

( woodpeckers and relatives) make up about half. In general, the Piciformes are insectivorous, although the

barbets Barbet may refer to: * Barbet (dog), a dog breed * Various birds in the infraorder Ramphastides ** African barbet, part of the bird family Lybiidae ** New World barbet, the bird family Capitonidae ** Asian barbet The Asian barbets are a family ...

and toucans mostly eat fruit and the

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 are unique among birds in being able to digest beeswax (although insects make up the bulk of their diet). Nearly all Piciformes have parrot-like zygodactyl feet—two toes forward and two back, an arrangement that has obvious advantages for birds that spend much of their time on tree trunks. An exception are a few species of three-toed woodpeckers. The jacamars aside, Piciformes do not have down feathers at any age, only true feathers. They range in size from the

rufous piculet The rufous piculet (''Sasia abnormis'') is a species of bird in the family Picidae. It is found in Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Thailand. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests and subtropical or tropi ...

at 8 centimetres in length, and weighing 7 grams, to the toco toucan, at 63 centimetres long, and weighing 680 grams. All nest in cavities and have altricial young.

Systematics

The Galbulidae and Bucconidae are often separated into a distinct Galbuliformes order. Analysis of

nuclear gene A nuclear gene is a gene whose physical DNA nucleotide sequence is located in the cell nucleus of a eukaryote. The term is used to distinguish nuclear genes from genes found in mitochondria or chloroplasts. The vast majority of genes in eukaryote ...

s confirms that they form a lineage of their own, but suggests that they are better treated as a

suborder Order ( la, ordo) is one of the eight major hierarchical taxonomic ranks in Linnaean taxonomy. It is classified between family and class. In biological classification, the order is a taxonomic rank used in the classification of organisms and ...

. The other families form another

monophyletic In cladistics for a group of organisms, monophyly is the condition of being a clade—that is, a group of taxa composed only of a common ancestor (or more precisely an ancestral population) and all of its lineal descendants. Monophyletic gro ...

group of suborder rank, but the barbets were determined to be

paraphyletic In taxonomy (general), taxonomy, a group is paraphyletic if it consists of the group's most recent common ancestor, last common ancestor and most of its descendants, excluding a few Monophyly, monophyletic subgroups. The group is said to be pa ...

with regard to the toucans and hence, the formerly all-encompassing Capitonidae have been split up. The woodpeckers and honeyguides are each other's closest relatives. According to some researchers, the entire order Piciformes should be included as a subgroup in Coraciiformes.

Evolution

Dans l'ombre des dinosaures - Primozygodactylus - 017

Reconstruction of the evolutionary history of the Piciformes has been hampered by poor understanding of the evolution of the zygodactyl foot. A number of prehistoric families and genera, from the Early Eocene '' Neanis'' and '' Hassiavis'', the

Zygodactylidae Zygodactylidae is a family of extinct birds found in Europe and North America from the Eocene epoch to the Middle Miocene. First named in 1971, based on fragmentary remains of two species from Germany, a more complete description of the birds bec ...

/ Primoscenidae, Gracilitarsidae, Sylphornithidae, and ''" Homalopus"'',Described in 1870, its name is preoccupied by a

subgenus In biology, a subgenus (plural: subgenera) is a taxonomic rank directly below genus. In the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, a subgeneric name can be used independently or included in a species name, in parentheses, placed between t ...

of ''

Cryptocephalus ''Cryptocephalus'' is a genus of leaf beetles in the subfamily Cryptocephalinae and belonging to the group of case-bearing leaf beetles called the Camptosomata. File:Cryptocephalus nitidus01.jpg, ''Cryptocephalus nitidus ''Cryptocephalus'' i ...

'' leaf beetles described in 1835. to the Miocene ''"Picus" gaudryi'' and the Pliocene '' Bathoceleus'' are sometimes tentatively assigned to this order. There are some

extinct Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

ancestral Piciformes known from fossils which have been difficult to place but at least in part probably belong to the Pici. The modern families are known to exist since the mid-late

Oligocene The Oligocene ( ) is a geologic epoch of the Paleogene Period and extends from about 33.9 million to 23 million years before the present ( to ). As with other older geologic periods, the rock beds that define the epoch are well identified but the ...

to early Miocene; consequently, the older forms appear to be more

basal Basal or basilar is a term meaning ''base'', ''bottom'', or ''minimum''. Science * Basal (anatomy), an anatomical term of location for features associated with the base of an organism or structure * Basal (medicine), a minimal level that is nec ...

. A large part of Piciform evolution seems to have occurred in Europe where only Picidae occur today; perhaps even some now exclusively Neotropical families have their origin in the

Old World The "Old World" is a term for Afro-Eurasia that originated in Europe , after Europeans became aware of the existence of the Americas. It is used to contrast the continents of Africa, Europe, and Asia, which were previously thought of by the ...

Classification

Order: PICIFORMES * Unassigned (all fossil) ** Piciformes gen. et sp. indet. IRScNB Av 65 (Early Oligocene of Boutersem, Belgium) ** Piciformes gen. et sp. indet. SMF Av 429 (Late Oligocene of Herrlingen, Germany) * Suborder Galbuli ** Family

Galbulidae The jacamars are a family, Galbulidae, of near passerine birds from tropical South and Central America, extending up to Mexico. The family contains five genera and 18 species. The family is closely related to the puffbirds, another Neotropical ...

– jacamars (18 species) ** Family Bucconidae – puffbirds, nunbirds and nunlets (some 38 species) * Suborder

Pici Pici (; ) is thick, hand-rolled pasta, like fat spaghetti.'' Il Devoto-Oli. Vocabolario della lingua Italiana'', edited by Luca Serianni and Maurizio Trifone, Le Monnier. It originates in the province of Siena in Tuscany; in the Montalcino are ...

** Unresolved and

taxa (all fossil) *** Genus '' Rupelramphastoides'' (Early Oligocene of Frauenweiler, Germany) *** Pici gen. et sp. indet. (Middle Miocene of Grive-Saint-Alban, France) *** Family Miopiconidae ( fossil) *** Family Picavidae (fossil) ** Infraorder Ramphastides *** Family

Megalaimidae The Asian barbets are a family of bird species, the Megalaimidae, comprising two genera with 35 species native to the forests of the Indomalayan realm from Tibet to Indonesia. They were once clubbed with all barbets in the family Capitonidae bu ...

– Asian barbets (about 25 species) *** Family Lybiidae – African barbets (about 40 species) *** Family

Capitonidae New World barbets are near passerine birds from the family Capitonidae of the order Piciformes, which inhabit humid forests in Central and South America. They are closely related to the toucans. The New World barbets are plump birds, with short ...

– New World barbets (about 15 species) *** Family

Semnornithidae The toucan-barbets are the small bird genus ''Semnornis''. This was often included in the paraphyletic barbets but recently usually considered a distinct family Semnornithidae; alternatively, all barbets might be moved to the toucan family Ram ...

– toucan barbets (2 species) *** Family Ramphastidae – toucans (about 40 species) ** Infraorder

Picides Picides is an infraorder of the order Piciformes that includes woodpeckers and honeyguides. 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 a ...

*** Family Indicatoridae – honeyguides (17 species) *** Family

– woodpeckers, piculets and wrynecks (over 200 species)

References

External links

Tree of Life Piciformes
{{Authority control Bird orders Neognathae Extant Eocene first appearances Eocene taxonomic orders Oligocene taxonomic orders Miocene taxonomic orders Pliocene taxonomic orders Pleistocene taxonomic orders Holocene taxonomic orders

Systematics

Evolution

Classification

See also

References

Further reading

External links