Globally, protected areas have long been the corner stone of biodiversity conservation efforts. In India's Western Ghats, small and isolated protected areas are embedded in a matrix of multiple land-uses, most of which include agroforests. These agroforests are being increasingly recognized for their supplementary role in conserving wildlife. We examined bird species richness and densities in areca (Areca catechu), coffee (Coffea arabica and Coffea canephora) and rubber (Hevea brasiliensis) agroforests in the Western Ghats. We developed a priori hypotheses, predicting that bird species richness and guild density would be highest in coffee, followed by areca and rubber agroforests. We carried out 551 point-count surveys involving 386 hours of sampling in 187 agroforests across a 29,634 km 2 area of the Ghats. We observed 204 bird species, of which 170 were residents. The average estimated richness per agroforest was higher in coffee (60.5) compared to rubber (45.4) and areca (34.1). We modeled species richness as a function of relevant biogeographic and environmental covariates. The most influential factors were tree cover, tree density and rainfall in all agroforests, but the strength of these effects varied. Coffee supported higher densities in all four habitat and three feeding guilds compared to areca and rubber. We integrated extensive field sampling with modeling that accounted for imperfect detection, while assessing bird richness and densities across multiple agroforest types. We establish that coffee agroforests are substantially richer in birds than rubber and areca, but all three agroforests play an important role in providing subsidiary habitats for birds in the Ghats. Policy decisions and markets must incorporate such biodiversity values and services provided by these agroforests to sustain and facilitate long-term biodiversity conservation.
1. Global tropical forests have been modified and fragmented by commodity agroforests, leading to significant alterations in ecological communities. Nevertheless, these production landscapes offer secondary habitats that support and sustain local biodiversity. In this study, we assess community level and species-specific responses of amphibians to land management in areca, coffee and rubber, three of the largest commodity agroforests in the Western Ghats.2. A total of 106 agroforests across a 30,000-km 2 landscape were surveyed for amphibians using a combination of visual and auditory encounter surveys. We used a Bayesian multi-species occupancy modelling framework to examine patterns of species richness, beta diversity, dominance structure and individual species occupancies. The influence of biogeographic variables such as elevation and latitude as well as microhabitat availability of streams, ponds and unpaved plantation roads was tested on amphibian species occupancy.3. Coffee agroforests had the highest species richness and lowest dominance when compared to areca and rubber. Beta diversity was highest in areca for within agroforest measures. Compared across agroforests, coffee had highest beta diversity with areca and rubber. Both elevation and latitude showed an overall positive association with amphibian occupancy, although species-specific responses varied considerably.4. Microhabitat availability was one of the strongest predictors of amphibian occupancy, with mean community response being positive with presence of water bodies and roads. Pond presence increased species richness per site by 34.7% (speciesspecific responses in occupancy ranged from -2.7% to 327%). Stream presence alone did not change species richness but species-specific response ranged from -59% to 273%. Presence of plantation roads also increased species richness by 21.5% (species-specific response ranged from -82% to 656%). Being unpaved withThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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