There is a roughly 50/50 divide in the family between species with biparental care, and those in which the males play no part in raising the young.

[3] The purple-throated fruitcrow lives in mixed-sex groups in which one female lays an egg and the others help provide insects to the chick.

[4] In cotinga species where only the females care for the eggs and young, the males have striking courtship displays, often grouped together in leks.

[7] 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.

[8] The following cladogram is based on a molecular phylogenetic study of the suboscines by Michael Harvey and collaborators published in 2020.