The Findings
Ethiopia has 860 documented bird species. Buechley and colleagues netted and identified 1,692 birds from 71 species during 18,177 net hours. Of those, 1,281 were captured in shade coffee and 411 in forest. The researchers then excluded nine species like owls, raptors and ravens too big to be netted, as well as 11 species that don’t consistently frequent the forest understory.
That left 1,605 birds from 51 species in the study’s analysis:
– All 51 species were found in shade coffee, including 19 also found in forests.
– Forests and shade coffee plantations had the same level of bird diversity, a measure of both the number of species and number of birds of each species. But shade coffee farms had twice the species richness (number of species only) of forests.
– Forest understory specialists, especially insectivores or insect-eating birds, were found in greatly reduced numbers in shade coffee. “That shows if we want to conserve these groups of species, we need to conserve forest,” Buechley says. “And the birds that are found in the forest understory are also the birds that potentially benefit the farmers by consuming insects,” allowing farmers to avoid the costs and hazards of pesticide use.
– Eight of nine Palearctic species – migratory birds from Europe, the Mideast, Asia and North Africa – were found only in shade coffee plantations, confirming shade coffee’s importance for migratory birds.
– “Both species and numbers of forest generalists [birds that can live in forests and other environments] and forest visitors were higher in traditional shade coffee plantations than in forest control sites,” Şekercioğlu says.
– Birds common in forests were specialists with narrow habitat niches; more species in shade coffee tended to be generalists able to live in varied environments.
The biologists said more research is needed to learn if forest species use shade coffee farms to breed or as stepping stones to better habitat, or if the shade coffee serves as a trap where the birds can live but cannot breed due to predators or lack of food.
Şekercioğlu and Buechley conducted the study with Ph.D. student Gelaye Gebremichael, at Ethiopia’s Jimma University; naturalist James Kuria Ndung’u, of Front Trail Safaris in Nairobi; Ph.D student Bruktawit Abdu, of Manchester Metropolitan University, England; naturalist Tifases Beyene, of Arba Minch Crocodile Farm, Ethiopia; Oslo University Ph.D. students Anagaw Atickem and Tariku Mekonnen (who also is with Jimma University); and ornithologist Luc Lens, of Belgium’s Ghent University.
Source: unews.utah.edu/news_releases/shade-coffee-is-for-the-birds/
