Spectrum News: UC study provides window into woodpecker's world
UC geography student says maintaining wooded corridors helps animals survive in fragmented habitat
Spectrum News highlighted a geography study at the University of Cincinnati that examined the unique habitat needs of pileated woodpeckers in southwest Ohio.
UC College of Arts and Sciences Professor Susanna Tong and doctoral student Ruijia Hu compared 10 years of pileated woodpecker sightings with geographic data identifying the mature wooded habitat the birds prefer.
A pileated woodpecker. Photo/Michael Miller
Pileated woodpeckers are the largest woodpeckers in North America.
They prefer mature woodlands with dead timber that conceals grubs and other preferred food.
While they are listed today as a species of least concern, that hasn't always been the case. The birds declined across the United States as mature forest was cut down for agriculture.
The researchers concluded that the woodpeckers can survive in increasingly fragmented urban forests if there are wooded corridors that help them get from patch to patch.
“For nesting, pileated woodpeckers would like maple trees, hickory trees, and oak trees,” Hu said. “And they really need mature trees to make the nest.”
Hu presented her findings this year to the American Association of Geographers’ conference in Denver.
Featured image at top: UC geography student Ruijia Hu, left, and Professor Susanna Tong look for pileated woodpeckers in Burnet Woods. Photo/Andrew Higley/UC Marketing + Brand
UC doctoral student Ruijia Hu studies evidence of woodpecker activity in the trunk of a tree at Burnet Woods. Photo/Andrew Higley/UC Marketing + Brand
Related Stories
UC professor leads film students to the future
April 6, 2026
As a kid, at the age of 10, Marty Schiff’s dad gave him a Kodak Brownie movie camera, and that led to a lifetime of creating stories on film. He spent his summers with that camera, making eight-millimeter movies, with a camera that taught him how to thread a projector, change the film in a closet, and tell stories with the medium he loved. “I always wanted to go to Hollywood,” Schiff says. So later he did, with $200 in his pocket, and began a career that has spanned acting, directing, producing—pretty much everything with the exception of costumes (“I’m not really good with a sewing machine,” he says).
High Court offers protections for therapy speech
April 5, 2026
Jennifer Bard, a professor in the Donald P. Klekamp College of Law and the UC Department of Internal Medicine, spoke with journalists about the US Supreme Court ruling granting first amendment protections for speech offered during therapy sessions.
Scientists discover how snakes stand upright without limbs
April 3, 2026
Smithsonian magazine highlights a study co-authored by UC Professor Bruce Jayne, an expert in snake locomotion, about how snakes stand upright without arms or legs.