Abstract
Verschuyl, J., J. L. Stephens, A. J. Kroll, K. E. Halstead, and D. Rock. 2021. Black-backed Woodpecker occupancy is extensive in green conifer forests of the southern Cascade Mountains, Oregon. Avian Conservation and Ecology 16(1):4. https://doi.org/10.5751/ACE-01725-160104
Highlights
Woodpeckers are often considered keystone species because they produce cavities in hard live and dead trees that are subsequently used by many other secondary cavitynesting species (Aubrey and Raley 2002, Remm and Lõhmus 2011)
We worked on the east slope of the southern Oregon Cascade Mountains and used playback call surveys with repeated visits to 90 transects in 2014 and 2015 to estimate occupancy probabilities by forest type while controlling for detection probability
We examined associations between occupancy probability and structural covariates in unburned forests, and found that occupancy did not vary with annual precipitation, large snag density, or snag basal area
Summary
Woodpeckers (family Picidae) are often considered keystone species because they produce cavities in hard live and dead trees that are subsequently used by many other secondary cavitynesting species (Aubrey and Raley 2002, Remm and Lõhmus 2011). Woodpecker species are often used to guide forest management decisions due to their link to overall bird community health (Mikusinski et al 2001, Drever et al 2008) and to the disproportionate influence they have on the communities in which they occur (Martin et al 2004, Virkkala 2006) Due to their common use of recently burned forests in western North America, Black-backed Woodpeckers (Picoides arcticus) are often used to support the maintenance of high-intensity fires instead of (or in addition to) fire-surrogate management treatments within fireprone landscapes (Hanson and North 2008, Hutto 2008, Cahall and Hayes 2009, Dudley et al 2012). Because habitat colonization is attributed largely to natal dispersal
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