The Colubroides are a

clade A clade (), also known as a monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that are monophyletic – that is, composed of a common ancestor and all its lineal descendants – on a phylogenetic tree. Rather than the English term, ...

in the suborder Serpentes (

snakes Snakes are elongated, limbless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes . Like all other squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales. Many species of snakes have skulls with several more joi ...

). It contains over 85% of all the extant species of snakes. The largest family is

Colubridae Colubridae (, commonly known as colubrids , from la, coluber, 'snake') is a family of snakes. With 249 genera, it is the largest snake family. The earliest species of the family date back to the Oligocene epoch. Colubrid snakes are found on ever ...

, but it also includes at least six other families, at least four of which were once classified as "Colubridae" before molecular phylogenetics helped in understanding their relationships. It has been found to be

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 ...

. Morphological

synapomorphies In phylogenetics, an apomorphy (or derived trait) is a novel character or character state that has evolved from its ancestral form (or plesiomorphy). A synapomorphy is an apomorphy shared by two or more taxa and is therefore hypothesized to have ...

are defined as such from Zaher et al. (2009):

Loss of the right
carotid artery Carotid artery may refer to: * Common carotid artery, often "carotids" or "carotid", an artery on each side of the neck which divides into the external carotid artery and internal carotid artery * External carotid artery, an artery on each side of t ...
; intercostal arteries arising from the dorsal aorta throughout the trunk at intervals of several body segments; specialized expanded costal cartilages; presence of a muscle protractor laryngeus; separate muscle protractor quadrati; separate spinalis and semispinalis portion in the epaxial trunk; spinules or spines covering the hemipenial body.

Traditionally, the name " Colubroidea" was used for this clade. This was seen problematic, however, as many of the same studies that support this clade of snakes also advocated for the various subfamilies of

to be reevaluated as proper families in their own right. As the result of this, Zaher et al. (2009) proposed to rename the clade as "Colubroides", restricting Colubroidea to the clade

and several related families that were formerly colubrid subfamilies. Below is a phylogeny of colubroid snakes found in many analyses:

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q65080051 Alethinophidia