Kim Williams-Guillen, our director of conservation science, has been studying fragmented wildlife habitat and conservation corridors in the coffee-growing regions of Chiapas, Mexico. Like many others, she's been testing the theory that shade-grown coffee plantations help ensure greater biodiversity in neighboring forests than do traditional cultivation methods, where coffee is grown more intensively in deforested areas (they do). Unlike scientists who've measured biodiversity before her, Kim's focus has been on aerial insectivorous bats.
Using acoustic monitoring and live captures, Kim and co-author Ivette Perfecto have been measuring the feeding activity and biodiversity of bat populations in open and forested areas. Their findings suggest that shaded coffee plantations provide more valuable foraging habitat and that several species of bats commute through low-shade coffee monocultures. Providing valuable ecosystems services (as pollinators and pest controllers), bats are as important to managed habitats as managed habitats are to bats. Kim and her co-author conclude with a reminder that "multiple social, political, and ecological considerations influence which model best suits a region when planning the integration of agricultural areas into landscape-scale conservation plans."
You can read the paper she's just published here.
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