Picoides

Picoides is a genus of woodpeckers (family Picidae) that are native to Eurasia and North America, commonly known as three-toed woodpeckers.

==Taxonomy== The genus Picoides was introduced by the French naturalist Bernard Germain de Lacépède in 1799. The type species was subsequently designated as the Eurasian three-toed woodpecker (Picoides tridactylus) by the English zoologist George Robert Gray in 1840. The genus name combines the Latin Picus for a woodpecker and the Greek -oidēs meaning "resembling". The genus Picoides formerly contained around 12 species. In 2015 a molecular phylogenetic analysis of nuclear and mitochondrial DNA sequences from pied woodpeckers found that three existing genera (Picoides, Veniliornis and Dendropicos) were polyphyletic. After the resurrection of five monophyletic genera and the subsequent rearrangement in which most of the former members of Picoides were moved to Leuconotopicus and Dryobates, only three of the original species remained.