Patti Newell, M.S.

Degree/Completion Date:

Spring 2008

Thesis Title/URL:

Foraging Behavior of Pileated Woodpeckers (Dryocopus pileatus) and Relative Abundance of Xylophagous Beetles in Cut and Uncut Mature Bottomland Hardwood Forests

My life as myself basically began when I moved away from the bustling Canadian megalopolis of the Toronto area where I grew up to cozy but cold Fredericton, New Brunswick.  While I completed my Bachelor of Science in Forestry at the University of New Brunswick, I discovered through an eccentric professor Dr. Dan Keppie, that I was interested in wildlife conservation.  I accepted a point counting position with this same professor and became addicted to field work, something I would not stop doing for 8 years and counting.  During the summer of 1998 I participated on a wood thrush field study in West Virginia and realized that you could do field work in places that had no mosquitoes, black flies, deer flies, horse flies, and no-seums and I never went back to Canada.  I’ve worked with passerines all over the United States but most extensively with Willow Flycatchers in Arizona, the most beautiful state of all.  I am also addicted to bouldering (a form of freestyle rock climbing that doesn’t require ropes) and have spent endless warm winters in Texas trying to boulder V10.  I am getting close!

Whether you believe it or not, the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) has been reported as barely escaping the brink of extinction, based on some sightings in bottomland forests in Arkansas (Fitzpatrick et al. 2005) and Florida (Hill et al. 2006).  I have been supported to research mechanisms that produce Ivory-billed Woodpecker food.  It is thought, based on a study done in 1942 by James Tanner that Ivory-billeds are specialized feeders on a family of beetles known as Cerambycids or Long-horned beetles.  I would like to be able to validate or invalidate this, however, we can’t keep tabs on any Ivory-billeds out there.  So I am using a surrogate species, the Pileated Woodpecker to elucidate relationships between woodpeckers and their food.  My fieldwork consists of radiotagging Pileated Woodpeckers and following them around to gather foraging observations as well as collecting beetles in malaise traps in select cut versus uncut forest.  My objectives are to determine whether select cutting attracts Cerambycid beetle colonizers and whether enough beetles are attracted to induce a shift in Pileated Woodpecker foraging behavior.