Status of woodpecker communities in the dry forest of Southeast Asia: indicators for forest conservation under long-term climate change conditions

Woodpeckers community plays important ecosystem services: 1) as ecosystem engineers they drill cavity used as food and water resource from forest birds during the dry-cold season when resources are limited (Blendinger 1999), and fundamental to secondary cavity nesting species (i.e. parakeets, barbets, falconets, and the highly threatened hornbills (Datta and Rawat 2004); 2) they facilitate dead tree decomposition processes (Farris et al. 2004) and 3) act as pest control (Sekercioglu 2006). Despite this, research study on Southeast Asian woodpeckers are still limited (Mikusinski 2006) in particular their use as indicator to evaluate and contrast for the fast primary forest decline in the region. It became therefore important to understand how long term deforestation and habitat changes are linked with climatic changing condition. The aim of this project is therefore to define past decline and estimate future degradation of open dry forests in Southeast Asian using Picidae communities as indicators.