Publication Date
2013
Document Type
Thesis
Committee Members
Volker Bahn (Advisor), Thomas Rooney (Committee Member), James Runkle (Committee Member)
Degree Name
Master of Science (MS)
Abstract
No studies of Pileated Woodpeckers (Dryocopus pileatus) have been done in southwestern Ohio where agriculture is prevalent and forests are significantly fragmented. The objective of this study was to determine the forest fragment size, isolation, and structure preferred by D. pileatus for breeding habitat. I sampled 37 forest fragments varying in size and isolation for D. pileatus cavities and forest characteristics and used LiDAR remote sensing data to analyze forest complexity. I hypothesized that D. pileatus relative abundance would increase with forest fragment size, density of dead trees, and forest vertical complexity but decrease with isolation. The hypotheses that size and isolation of a forest fragment influence D. pileatus habitat choices were rejected. However, snag density, directly relating food and shelter requirements for D. pileatus , showed the predicted association with woodpecker activity as did forest height and forest complexity.
Page Count
50
Department or Program
Department of Biological Sciences
Year Degree Awarded
2013
Copyright
Copyright 2013, some rights reserved. My ETD may be copied and distributed only for non-commercial purposes and may not be modified. All use must give me credit as the original author.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
