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The cotingas are a large family, Cotingidae, of Tyranni passerine birds found in Central America and tropical South America. Cotingas are birds of forests or forest edges, that are primary frugivorous. They all have broad bills with hooked tips, rounded wings, and strong legs. They range in size from of the fiery-throated fruiteater ( Pipreola chlorolepidota) up to of the Amazonian umbrellabird ( Cephalopterus ornatus).
In cotinga species where only the females care for the eggs and young, the males have striking courtship displays, often grouped together in leks. Such sexual selection results in the males of these species, including the Guianan cock-of-the-rock, being brightly coloured, or decorated with plumes or wattles, like the , with their umbrella-like crest and long throat wattles. Other lekking cotingids like the bellbirds and screaming piha, have distinctive and far-carrying calls. In such canopy-dwelling genera as Carpodectes, Cotinga, and Xipholena, males gather high in a single tree or in adjacent trees, but male cocks-of-the-rock, as befits their more terrestrial lives, give their elaborate displays in leks on the ground.
The females of both lekking and biparental species are duller than the males.
A 2014 molecular phylogenetic study of the cotingas by Jacob Berv and Richard Prum found that the genera formed five monophyletic clades and they proposed that the family could be divided into five subfamilies. The following cladogram is based on a molecular phylogenetic study of the by Michael Harvey and collaborators published in 2020. A high resolution version of the phylogenetic tree in Figure 1 is available from the first author's website here.
The genus Tijuca was found to be embedded in Lipaugus, a position that was confirmed by a more detailed 2020 study.
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A number of species previously placed in this family are now placed in the family Tityridae (genera Laniisoma, Laniocera and Iodopleura)Remsen, J. V. Jr., C. D. Cadena, A. Jaramillo, M. Nores, J. F. Pacheco, M. B. Robbins, T. S. Schulenberg, F. G. Stiles, D. F. Stotz, & K. J. Zimmer. 2007. A classification of the bird species of South America. American Ornithologists' Union. Accessed 12 December 2007.
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