The black-backed woodpecker (Picoides arcticus) is a species of management concern in California. As part of a study of black-backed woodpecker home range size and foraging ecology, nine birds in Lassen National Forest (Shasta and Lassen Counties, California) were radio-tracked during the 2011 breeding season. One of the marked birds was found dead after being tracked for a 10-wk period in which it successfully nested. A postmortem examination of the dead bird revealed that it was emaciated and autolyzed, with the presumptive cause being numerous spiruroid nematodes of the genus Procyrnea in the gizzard. This first observation of Procyrnea nematodes in a black-backed woodpecker is notable because the Procyrnea infection was considered lethal and because Procyrnea has been implicated in substantial die-offs in other bird species, including woodpeckers.
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Incorporating pyrodiversity into wildlife habitat assessments for rapid post-fire management: A woodpecker case study.
Ecol Appl
June 2023
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA.
Spatial and temporal variation in fire characteristics-termed pyrodiversity-are increasingly recognized as important factors that structure wildlife communities in fire-prone ecosystems, yet there have been few attempts to incorporate pyrodiversity or post-fire habitat dynamics into predictive models of animal distributions and abundance to support post-fire management. We use the black-backed woodpecker-a species associated with burned forests-as a case study to demonstrate a pathway for incorporating pyrodiversity into wildlife habitat assessments for adaptive management. Employing monitoring data (2009-2019) from post-fire forests in California, we developed three competing occupancy models describing different hypotheses for habitat associations: (1) a static model representing an existing management tool, (2) a temporal model accounting for years since fire, and (3) a temporal-landscape model which additionally incorporates emerging evidence from field studies about the influence of pyrodiversity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMulti-trophic occupancy modeling connects temporal dynamics of woodpeckers and beetle sign following fire.
PLoS One
March 2023
The Institute for Bird Populations, Petaluma, CA, United States of America.
In conifer forests of western North America, wildlife populations can change rapidly in the decade following wildfire as trees die and animals respond to concomitant resource pulses that occur across multiple trophic levels. In particular, black-backed woodpeckers (Picoides arcticus) show predictable temporal increases then declines following fire; this trajectory is widely believed to be a response to the woodpeckers' main prey, woodboring beetle larvae of the families Buprestidae and Cerambycidae, but we lack understanding of how abundances of these predators and prey may be associated in time or space. Here, we pair woodpecker surveys over 10 years with surveys of woodboring beetle sign and activity, collected at 128 survey plots across 22 recent fires, to ask whether accumulated beetle sign indicates current or past black-backed woodpecker occurrence, and whether that relationship is mediated by the number of years since fire.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJuvenile survival of a burned forest specialist in response to variation in fire characteristics.
J Anim Ecol
May 2021
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA.
Pyrodiversity, defined as variation in fire history and characteristics, has been shown to catalyse post-fire biodiversity in a variety of systems. However, the demographic and behavioural mechanisms driving the responses of individual species to pyrodiversity remain largely unexplored. We used a model post-fire specialist, the black-backed woodpecker (Picoides arcticus), to examine the relationship between fire characteristics and juvenile survival while controlling for confounding factors.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCross-scale occupancy dynamics of a postfire specialist in response to variation across a fire regime.
J Anim Ecol
September 2018
The Institute for Bird Populations, Point Reyes Station, California.
Fire creates challenges and opportunities for wildlife through rapid destruction, modification and creation of habitat. Fire has spatially variable effects on landscapes; however, for species that benefit from the ephemeral resource patches created by fire, it is critical to understand characteristics of fires that promote postfire colonization and persistence and the spatial scales on which they operate. Using a model postfire specialist, the black-backed woodpecker (Picoides arcticus), we examined how colonization and persistence varied across two spatial scales as a function of four characteristics of fire regimes-fire severity, fire size, fire ignition date and number of years since fire.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHarvesting interacts with climate change to affect future habitat quality of a focal species in eastern Canada's boreal forest.
PLoS One
March 2018
Université du Québec à Rimouski, Centre for Northern Studies & Centre for Forest Research, Département de biologie, chimie et géographie, Allée des Ursulines, Rimouski, Québec, Canada.
Article Synopsis
- Many studies use species distribution models to predict future bird ranges, but these often overlook key factors like climate change and harvesting, limiting their effectiveness, especially for boreal birds.
- This study analyzed how climate change and harvesting impact wildfires and forest processes in eastern Canada’s boreal forests, specifically assessing future habitats for the black-backed woodpecker (BBWO).
- Findings indicate that while climate change could drastically reduce BBWO productivity, current harvesting practices are the main threat, significantly diminishing old-growth conifer forests and affecting overall biodiversity.
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