Pici is one of the two suborders 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 ...
and includes two infraorders
Ramphastides (toucans and barbets) and
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 ...
(honeyguides and woodpeckers). Members of this suborder are often called "true piciforms", as the jacamars of
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 ...
and puffbirds of
Bucconidae
The puffbirds and their relatives in the near passerine family Bucconidae are tropical tree-dwelling insectivorous birds that are found from South America up to Mexico. Together with their closest relatives, the jacamars, they form a divergent ...
(of the other piciform suborder
Galbuli
Galbuli is one of the two suborders of the order Piciformes and includes two families Bucconidae (puffbirds) and Galbulidae (jacamars). The other suborder Pici is a global group of piciforms, puffbirds and jacamars are only found in the Neotropic ...
) were thought to be not closely related to toucans and woodpeckers, but instead to the order
Coraciiformes
The Coraciiformes are a group of usually colourful birds including the kingfishers, the bee-eaters, the rollers, the motmots, and the todies. They generally have syndactyly, with three forward-pointing toes (and toes 3 & 4 fused at their bas ...
.
[ Sibley, Charles Gald & Ahlquist, Jon Edward (1990): ''Phylogeny and classification of birds''. Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn.] However, analysis of nuclear DNA in a 2003 study placed them as a sister group to the rest of the Piciformes, also showing that the groups had developed
zygodactyl
In biology, dactyly is the arrangement of digits (fingers and toes) on the hands, feet, or sometimes wings of a tetrapod animal. It comes from the Greek word δακτυλος (''dáktylos'') = "finger".
Sometimes the ending "-dactylia" is use ...
feet before separating.
Per Ericson and colleagues, in analysing genomic DNA, confirmed that puffbirds and jacamars were sister groups and their place in Piciformes.
References
External links
Tree of Life Piciformes
{{Taxonbar, from=Q16542266
Extant Rupelian first appearances