Page "River kingfishers" Paragraph 2

The river kingfishers family Alcedinidae is one of nine in the order Coraciiformes, which also includes the motmots, bee-eaters, todies, rollers, ground-rollers, Cuckoo Roller and two other families of kingfishers.

The rollers do not appear to be particularly closely related to the others groups, and the Coraciiformes are therefore probably polyphyletic.

In the past, all kingfishers were placed in the Alcedinidae, but it became clear that the three subfamilies diverged early, and the Halcyonidae ( tree kingfisher | tree kingfishers ) and Cerylidae ( water kingfishers ) are usually now treated as full families, with the Alcedinidae as the basal lineage in the kingfisher clade.