The Guadeloupe woodpecker (Melanerpes herminieri) or Tapeur is a species of bird in the woodpecker family Picidae belonging to the genus Melanerpes. Endemic to the Guadeloupe archipelago in the Lesser Antilles, it is a medium-sized forest woodpecker with entirely black plumage and red-to-purple reflections on its stomach. It lives mainly in the islands' tropical rainforest areas. The woodpecker has no sexual dimorphism. The species has adapted under the pressure of urbanization to more open forest environments.
During the breeding season, the Guadeloupe woodpecker is solitary bird that nests in holes it digs with its in the trunk of dead trees—mainly coconut—where the female lays three to five eggs. The eggs are incubated for fifteen days before hatching, after which the adult female feeds the chicks in the nest for about a month. Juvenile birds stay with the parents for several months before becoming independent. Guadeloupe woodpeckers are mainly insectivorous, but they also feed on small vertebrates like tree frogs and Anolis marmoratus, as well as a variety of seasonal fruits.
The Guadeloupe woodpecker was long considered "near-threatened" according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature due to its endemism, predation of its eggs and nests by black rats, its relatively low numbers, and the specificities of the archipelago—island topography, habitat fragmentation, and urbanization. It was downgraded to an assessment of "least concern" in July 2019. While the Guadeloupe woodpecker seems relatively protected on the island Basse-Terre, the state of its populations on Grande-Terre—where there are risks of extinction—is much more of a problem. It has become an emblem of Guadeloupean fauna and is now commonly found in the Guadeloupe National Park.
Taxonomy Described in 1830 by René Primevère Lesson in the genus Picus, the Guadeloupe woodpecker was given its binomial name, Melanerpes herminieri, after the naturalist Félix Louis L'Herminier, who studied in Guadeloupe and wrote numerous works on birds. The name of the genus Melanerpes comes from the Greek melas meaning "black" and herpēs meaning "climber". In the local Guadeloupe Creole, it is called Tapeur or Tapé ("one who knocks"). It is also called Toto bwa or Toc-toc for its tapping noise.
The Guadeloupe woodpecker had been considered for some time to be in the monotypic genus Linneopicus before being classified in the genus Melanerpes. It may have evolved during the Pleistocene from the Puerto Rican woodpecker (M. portoricensis), which itself is derived phylogenetically from the red-headed woodpecker (M. erythrocephalus). The phylogenetic position diagram of the genus Melanerpes is the least-known among the family Picidae, whose divergence into the subfamilies Jynginae, Picumninae, and Picinae—to which Melanerpes belongs—dates from 30 to 20 million years ago in the Oligocene or lower Miocene.
Distribution and habitat Since the extinction of the Guadeloupe parakeet (Psittacara labati) and the Guadeloupe amazon (Amazona violacea) in the 18th century (if they existed), the Guadeloupe woodpecker is the only bird species that is endemic to Guadeloupe, and is the only woodpecker species found in the Lesser Antilles. It, along with two species of forest bats and two species of frogs, is one of the archipelago's five endemic animal species.
The Guadeloupe woodpecker is present on the main island from sea level to the upper tree line, at around altitude, but is historically more common on island of Basse-Terre, where it has a preference for the island's east coast, than on Grande-Terre. It is absent from the dependencies of Guadeloupe (Îles des Saintes, Marie-Galante, and La Désirade).
The Guadeloupe woodpecker, an exclusively stationary species, is found in a wide variety of forest types across the islands: it is most common in the tropical rainforest areas of Basse-Terre; in 1998, these rainforests had more than 70 percent of the population of the species in Guadeloupe, 5 percent were in deciduous areas, while the deciduous forests of Grande-Terre hosted about 20 percent, and the mangrove and swamp in the center of the archipelago held the remaining 5 percent.
In 2008, a study of Guadeloupean avifauna showed the presence of the Guadeloupe woodpecker in all zones of Guadeloupe National Park, where it prefers Côte-au-vent, the ombrophile massif on the eastern coast of the island, as well as the northwestern zone towards Deshaies north of the Côte-sous-le-vent. The species also seems to have colonized the Caribbean Mountains at the southern tip of Basse-Terre between 1998 and 2007. In 2008, Basse-Terre hosted three-quarters of the population of woodpeckers in the archipelago and Grande-Terre the other quarter.
The Guadeloupe woodpecker is a territorial bird but not particularly aggressive towards other birds, with which it seldom interacts. The species needs a territory of between per pair to live, and even at the southern tip of the more-arid Grande-Terre.
Description
The Guadeloupe woodpecker is a medium-sized, robust woodpecker species measuring in length, and with a mass of in males and in females. It is distinct in its appearance within its genus, and unlike other species of Melanerpes, males and females do not present a marked sexual dimorphism in their plumage; they are entirely black with gradual reflections ranging from dark red to burgundy on the ventral plumage, dark blue on the back, and metallic blue on the wing tips. Males have a wingspan of compared with in females). The black coloration of the Guadeloupe woodpecker may be an advantage in drying feathers by exposure to the sun and fighting against humidity, and the black feathers may be resistant to abrasion, but no definitive explanation has been advanced by the scientific community. This woodpecker is solitary animal, a social behavioral trait that is often associated with plumage monomorphism.
The legs, which terminate in four toes in a zygodactyl arrangement, are gray-green to gray-blue and powerful, with highly developed talons. The talons are curved for gripping bark with the tip of the claw; this represents an adaptation to living on trunks and branches of trees. The eyes are in diameter (pupil ) with dark brown irises. The is entirely black and is between 15 and 20 percent longer and more robust in males; this is the main criterion for recognizing the sex of individuals. The size of the female's beak is equal to that of her head while that of the male is distinctly longer.
As with all woodpeckers that are adapted to piercing wood, the nostrils on the have small feathers to protect respiration and mucous glands to trap dust. The pterygoid protractor muscle, which is highly developed in woodpeckers, is important for adapting to shock absorption by uncoupling the beak, which can move laterally, from the skull to minimize the transmission of kinetic energy to the brain and eyes. There is also a specific pterygoid bone in Picidae compared to other birds. They have a specific cancellous tissue between the skull and the beak, with a displacement of the attachment of the greater horn of the hyoid bone to the quadrate bone, as well as a reinforced sternum and keel. These elements maximize energy dissipation and shock absorption for the bird during impact. The specific, long tongue of the Picidae is cylindrical and is about twice the size of its bill. The tongue is the result of an evolution of the hyoid apparatus with two parts; one bony at the end is equipped with small hooks, the other cartilaginous lengthens under the action of a branchiomandibular muscle that attaches to the branch of the mandible, split, anchoring on the anterior part at the base of the culmen, surrounding the skull from behind with its two branches, descending on either side of the spine, esophagus and larynx, which pushes the hyoid horns and tongue out of the beak.
Juvenile birds are similar to adults but have duller, dark brown plumage. The life expectancy of individuals is greater than five years and estimated to be between eight and ten years.
Behavior Food The adult Guadeloupe woodpecker feeds mainly on termites, ants, larvae, myriapods, and arthropods—90 percent of which are collected when piercing dead wood— and fruits. Due to the difference in the size of their beaks, males preferentially seek their prey on large branches and dead trunks while females more frequently attach themselves to branches, especially those with small cross-sections. Scientific studies of a captive woodpecker have shown the tip of the bird's long tongue has horny, backward-facing, saliva-coated hooks that allow it to grasp and extract insects from deep holes in wood rather than "harpooning" them.
It has been reported the Guadeloupe woodpecker may occasionally and opportunistically feed on a small lizards (Anolis marmoratus), which are also endemic to the archipelago. Female woodpeckers may occasionally consume crab carcasses during the breeding season to obtain the calcium necessary for the production of their eggshells.
No precise studies of woodpecker feeding, such as identification and quantity of insects consumed, in adults could be made because of the speed of their prey consumption. During the nesting period, however, studies have shown the typical diet of nestlings—brought by the parents at a rate of five times per hour—mainly consists of large prey ranging from with an average of . Although the Guadalupe woodpecker feeds its brood half as frequently as the Jamaican woodpecker, the prey brought in is two-to-four times larger because the species—unlike its Jamaican cousin, whose beak size is identical—does not swallow or regurgitate them but carries them in its beak. The chicks' diet mainly consists of insects of the class Orthoptera (44 percent, mainly grasshoppers of the species Tapalisca and cockroaches of the species Pelmatosilpha purpurascens), larvae (20 percent, mainly beetles—including Scarabaeidae and Buprestidae—and Diptera), tree frogs Eleutherodactylus martinicensis (11 percent), adult beetles (10.5 percent, from the families Curculionidae, Cerambycidae, and Scarabaeidae), Lepidoptera (6.5 percent), and gastropods (3.2 percent), as well as fruits, mainly from the genera Clusia (70 percent), Eugenia, and Myrcia (16 percent), as well as pieces of mango (Mangifera indica). Adults do not feed ants or termites to their chicks.
The birds' water intake comes from sixteen species of seasonal fruits, the seeds and pits of which they spit out after eating the pulp, violently shaking their heads like all woodpeckers, they have rarely been observed drinking. Guadeloupe woodpeckers use anvils for cutting up large prey such as frogs and anolis, skinning insects, and cracking open seeds and hard fruits. These anvils are usually the tops of palmless coconut trees, which also provide food storage areas.
Breeding
The Guadaloupe woodpecker is solitary and does not congregate in colonies. It is an exclusive monogamist whose breeding season runs from January to August, with a peak from April to June - indicating a lack of competition in the bird's ecological niche. The breeding season is variable from pair to pair, and from year to year, the determining factor being access to optimal food, which in Guadeloupe is dependent on rainfall. Studies have shown only 6–8 percent of nestling paternities are the result of relationships outside the established pair.