White-backed Woodpecker Dendrocopos leucotos Scientific name definitions

The largest of the Dendrocopos woodpeckers, the White-backed Woodpecker has a broad Palearctic distribution; occurring in several disjunct populations ranging from Scandinavia to southern Japan and Taiwan, southwards to the Taurus Mountains in southern Türkiye, and parts of southern China. Studies of this species are similarly disjunct, with most of what known about its ecology coming from comparatively small numbers breeding in the Pyrenees and central and eastern Europe. There is little published information regarding populations in East Asia.

Considered to be an umbrella species for inconspicuous dead-wood-living insects and fungi, the White-backed Woodpecker is dependent on old-growth deciduous and mixed forests for both feeding and nesting. This association with primeval or near-primeval forest is primarily due to the bird's specialized diet, which is largely comprised of saproxylic Coleoptera (beetles that feed on decaying wood) and the wood-boring larvae of some Lepidoptera, which only occur in older, unmanaged forests. As these forests are lost, the White-backed Woodpecker has become very rare across much of northern and western Europe.

Ten to twelve subspecies are recognized, with the southern Japanese D. l. owstoni (which is morphologically quite different from all other subspecies) sometimes treated as a separate species: the Amami Woodpecker (1 del Hoyo, J., and N. J. Collar (2014). HBW and BirdLife International Illustrated Checklist of the Birds of the World. Volume 1. Non-passerines. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona, Spain. Close ). The southern European and western Asian D. l. lilfordi is also relatively distinctive, and species status has been relatively frequently mooted at various times during recent decades as a result of this distinction.