Traditional, shade-grown coffee plantations harbor a diversity of many taxa — orchids, insects, and mammals, for example. But it is the research that showed the importance of shade coffee plantations to birds that caught the attention of the public, and…
Revised on January 31, 2025Birds and other biodiversity
A paper in the journal Conservation Biology reports that shade coffee plantations in Mexico provide refuge for orchids from lower montane cloud forest habitats — the most endangered forest type in the country, now comprising only 1% of Mexico’s land….
Revised on November 24, 2020These two recent papers discuss the diversity and role of ants in coffee plantations, and how the growing method (sun versus shade) impacts these ants. Ants are vital in ecosystems. In tropical forests, there are entire groups of birds (known…
Revised on June 12, 2014Pineda, E., C. Moreno, F. Escobar, and G. Halffter. 2005. Frog, bat, and dung beetle diversity in the cloud forest and coffee agrosystems of Veracruz, Mexico. Conservation Biology 19: 400-410. Cloud forest fragments and shade coffee plantations were compared in…
Revised on June 12, 2014