Pica is a genus of seven species of birds in the family Corvidae in both the New World and the Old. It is one of several corvid genera whose members are known as magpies. Pica have long tails and predominantly black and white plumage, with iridescent blue, green, purple and bronze colours on the wings and tail in good light. After Corvus, this genus is the second most widespread within the Corvidae family, being distributed across Eurasia, north Africa, and western North America. Molecular phylogeny suggests that Pica is most closely related to nutcrackers (Nucifraga), jackdaws (Coloeus) and crows and ravens (Corvus).
Taxonomy
The genus Pica was introduced by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760. He derived the name by tautonymy from the specific epithet of the Eurasian magpie Corvus pica which was introduced by Linnaeus in 1758. Pica is the Latin word for the Eurasian magpie.
In 2018, a molecular phylogenetic study found that the Eurasian magpie consisted of multiple species including the Maghreb magpie, the Asir magpie, the black-rumped magpie and the oriental magpie.
Species
The genus contains seven living species; species order follows AviList:
thumb|The geographically highly isolated magpie on [[Kamchatka, Pica pica camtschatica, with extensive white in its primaries, was recovered as sister to the rest of Pica pica by Kryukov et al.,
A range gap formerly existed between Pica pica and Pica serica in the Amur region of southeast Siberia to eastern Mongolia, but with range expansion in recent decades by both species, this has now filled in; hybrids have been observed where the two now meet, but have low breeding success.<!-- AnuOrnitolBalears16:3; Ardeola51:91 -->