Volume 26, Issue 5 p. 714-728
Original Article

Continuous forest at higher elevation plays a key role in maintaining bird and mammal diversity across an Andean coffee-growing landscape

M. J. Bedoya-Durán

Corresponding Author

M. J. Bedoya-Durán

School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

Grupo de Investigación en Ecología Animal, Departamento de Biología, Universidad del Valle, Cali, Colombia

Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

Correspondence

María Juliana Bedoya-Durán, School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA.

Email: [email protected]

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H. H. Jones

H. H. Jones

The Institute for Bird Populations, Petaluma, CA, USA

Florida Museum of Natural History, Gainesville, FL, USA

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K. M. Malone

K. M. Malone

School of Natural Resources, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA

Department of Environmental Science & Ecology, State University of New York-Brockport, Brockport, NY, USA

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L. C. Branch

L. C. Branch

Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

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First published: 07 February 2023
Citations: 1

Editor: Karl Evans

Associate Editor: Lisanne Petracca

Abstract

Shade coffee is among the most widespread and economically important crops in montane tropical regions and is considered more hospitable to wildlife than non-shaded crops. Questions remain regarding the value of shade coffee as habitat for wildlife, however, given the historical research focus on small-bodied and canopy species. Simultaneously, climate-driven upslope migration of coffee crops represents an emerging threat to well-conserved tropical montane forest at higher elevations. This study examined ground-dwelling birds and medium-large mammals in a shade coffee landscape of the Western Andes of Colombia. We asked the following questions: (1) How do bird and mammal occupancy, richness, and community composition change from continuous forest at higher elevations to middle-elevation forest fragments and shade coffee? (2) Do birds and mammals differ in their response to shade coffee? (3) Do high-elevation forests contribute to maintaining biodiversity in mid-elevation shade coffee? We sampled birds and mammals with camera traps in middle-elevation shade coffee plantations and forest fragments and in continuous forest further upslope. We then used a multi-species occupancy model to correct for imperfect detection and to estimate occupancy, richness, and community composition. Shade coffee lacked ~50% of the bird and mammal species found in continuous forest, primarily large-bodied and insectivorous birds and forest-specialist and large-bodied mammals. Forest fragment richness was closer to shade coffee than to continuous forest, but species composition significantly differed between coffee and both forest types. Birds in coffee plantations were generally a unique subset of disturbance-adapted specialists, whereas mammals in coffee were mostly generalists. Distance from continuous forest was the most important landscape-level predictor of occupancy for both taxa, suggesting that this forest plays a key role in maintaining biodiversity across the coffee landscape. Biodiversity conservation in shade coffee landscapes, therefore, will be ineffective unless linked to landscape-level initiatives that conserve higher elevation tropical montane forest.

Conflict of interest

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.