16, see article text The woodcreepers (Dendrocolaptinae) comprise a subfamily of suboscine passerine birds endemic to the Neotropics.

[2][3] Generally brownish birds, the true woodcreepers maintain an upright vertical posture, supported by their specialized stiff tails.

Some woodcreepers often form part of the core group at the centre of flocks attending army ant swarms.

Males tend to be slightly larger than females on average, but considerable overlap in size occurs in most species.

Bills can be straight or highly decurved, and can account for as much as a quarter of the length of the bird (as happens in the long-billed woodcreeper).

As many as 19 species of woodcreeper may co-occur in some areas of the Amazon, although in other rainforests, such as those in Costa Rica, the numbers are much lower.

A few specimens collected by scientists had fruit or seeds in their stomachs, but plant material is not thought to be regularly taken by any species.

Prey is almost always obtained by moving up the trunk or branch, and there are two main foraging techniques, probing and sallying.

Although some analyses suggested that they are more closely related to the woodcreepers than to true furnariids,[9] other studies have not found the same results.

Examples of "species" where vocal and morphological variations suggests that more than one species-level taxon could be involved are the curve-billed scythebill and the white-chinned, olivaceous, strong-billed and straight-billed woodcreepers.

A cladogram of the 16 woodcreeper genera based on the results of a 2020 molecular phylogenetic study of the suboscines by Michael Harvey and collaborators is shown below.