Bad for trees, but good for woodpeckers: a new Swiss study shows that a bark beetle infestation increases the number of woodpeckers. +Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox Even years after a forest was infested by the pest, the woodpecker population remained high. Bark beetles have an undeserved bad reputation, wrote the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) in a press release on the study on Wednesday. For the study, which was published in the Journal of Animal Ecology, WSL researchers compiled three decades of data on bark beetle infestations and woodpecker populations. The researchers used computer modelling to look for correlations in this data. After a bark beetle infestation, the number of woodpeckers increased significantly. Of the three woodpecker species analysed, the researchers found the strongest correlations with the three-toed woodpecker. The scientists expected this, as this woodpecker eats the bark beetles. But ...
