More trees with your coffee? Diversity and habitat associations of terrestrial medium- and large-sized mammals in shade-grown coffee plantations of the highlands of Guatemala

Details

• Journal Title:
  ACTA ZOOLÓGICA MEXICANA (N.S.)
• Personal Author:
  Escobar-Anleu, Bárbara Isabela ; Soto-Shoender, José Roberto ; Rivas-Romero, Javier Antípatro ; Montes, Nancy
• NOAA Program & Office:
  Sea Grant
• Sea Grant Program:
  FLSGP (Florida Sea Grant)
• Description:
  Agricultural practices can have detrimental impacts on biodiversity, but some studies have shown the benefits of agroforestry practices like shade-grown coffee to bird communities and, to a lesser extent, to mammal communities. To better understand whether shade-grown coffee plantations can contribute to the conservation of mammal communities, we deployed camera traps in private reserves with a matrix of shade-grown coffee plantations and forest in the highlands of Guatemala. At each reserve we estimated species richness of terrestrial medium- and large-sized mammals. We also estimated mammal relative abundance and occupancy probabilities as proxies for mammalian habitat associations and evaluated how these were affected by key landscape features (e.g., land-use type, asphalt roads, and distance to protected areas). We used hierarchical multi-species Bayesian abundance models that account for imperfect detection to estimate our parameters of interest and model the influence of landscape features on site-level species richness and species relative abundance. We detected 14 species across all reserves and found a strong influence of land use and presence of asphalt roads on mammalian relative abundances and species richness. More species used areas around the camera traps in forest than in shade-grown coffee plantations and far from asphalt roads. Our study shows that reserves with shade-grown coffee plantations can harbor terrestrial mammalian communities of conservation interest. Our results also suggest that to maintain mammalian diversity and abundances in our study area, shade-grown coffee crops should be mixed in with natural forests and the presence of asphalt roads within these should be avoided or minimized.
• Keywords:
  General Earth And Planetary Sciences General Engineering General Environmental Science General Earth And Planetary Sciences General Earth And Planetary Sciences
• Source:
  ACTA ZOOLÓGICA MEXICANA (N.S.) (2023)
• DOI:
  https://doi.org/10.21829/azm.2023.3912570
• ISSN:
  2448-8445 ; 0065-1737
• Format:
  PDF
• Publisher:
  Instituto de Ecologia, A.C.
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• License:
  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
• Rights Information:
  CC BY-NC-SA
• Compliance:
  Library
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:f162969cd593d6a18d073180aaf197d7825c6a9169bd30ccbee1d1da391e8ffcbe649e28ba5d9ca415061e91bac342a3a4e4f292345c4194015b58015a575eff
• Download URL:
  https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/62281/noaa_62281_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 590.85 KB ]