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Black Woodpecker Cavity-Tree Plots Had Greater Microhabitat Richness Than Controls

Black woodpecker perched on a tree trunk in Germia, Kosovo
Research · Ecology

Trees containing black woodpecker (Dryocopus martius) cavities contributed unusually strongly to the variety of small habitat structures found in French forests. A preprint posted on 26 February 2026 found that plots centred on black-woodpecker cavity trees contained a richer set of tree-related microhabitats than paired control plots.

Tree-related microhabitats are distinct structures such as cavities, cracks, exposed wood, dead branches, fungal fruiting bodies and other features that provide resources for forest organisms. The researchers compared black-woodpecker cavity trees and their surroundings with paired forest plots across a broad range of lowland and mountain forests in France.

Removing the cavity tree reduced habitat diversity

The team also constructed four counterfactual scenarios in which the black-woodpecker cavity tree was either removed from the dataset or replaced by other trees that themselves carried microhabitats. This allowed them to estimate how much of the plot-level diversity was specifically associated with the original cavity tree.

Plots with black-woodpecker cavity trees had higher local and overall microhabitat richness than control plots. In every simulated removal or replacement scenario, measures of microhabitat diversity declined, and none of the alternative trees restored the observed richness and composition of the original cavity-tree plots.

Decay and excavation created additional structures

The analysis showed that much of the cavity trees’ contribution came from microhabitats associated with dead or decaying wood. These included features linked to decay processes, excavation scars and secondary structures that develop on the same trees over time.

The authors therefore describe black-woodpecker cavity trees as habitat structures whose value extends beyond the cavity itself. They argue that forest biodiversity indicators and retention guidelines should explicitly recognise these trees rather than treating individual microhabitats as interchangeable.

Sources and image credit

  1. Jääskeläinen, L., Leclerc, L., Breton, V., Vincenot, L., & Paillet, Y. (2026). The whole greater than the part: Assessing the relationships between Black Woodpecker cavity trees and diversity of tree-related microhabitats [Preprint]. SSRN. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.6307418Primary preprint posted 26 February 2026. Paired plots in French temperate forests showed higher tree-related microhabitat alpha and gamma richness around black-woodpecker cavity trees than controls; all four counterfactual removal/replacement scenarios reduced alpha, beta and gamma diversity.

Image: Julianruizp / Wikimedia Commons — black woodpecker (Dryocopus martius) in Germia, Kosovo, photographed 24 April 2025; representative species image, not from the French study · CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ · Source

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