Bird Assemblages in Coffee Agroforestry Systems and Other Human Modified Habitats in Indonesia

Simple Summary Given the high degree of deforestation in the tropics due to shifting agriculture, it is a priority for conservation to find sustainable agriculture systems. We assessed bird communities over 1228 plots from 21 sites in the highly populated island of Java, Indonesia. We found that commercial coffee polycultures (i.e., fields comprised of coffee plants, other crops and/or fruit trees, and diverse shade trees) could sustain similar levels of bird abundance, diversity, and richness than coffee systems under natural forests and community managed forests. Commercial coffee polyculture fields host higher bird abundance, diversity, and richness than sun-exposed coffee fields, fields with other crops or fruit trees, and tree farms. We provide evidence that complex commercial agroforestry systems can host similar levels of biodiversity to agroforestry systems under natural forest. Deforestation in the tropics is mainly driven by the need to expand agriculture and forestry land. Tropical cropland has also undergone a process of intensification, particularly evident in regions that are the main exporters of deforestation-driven commodities. Around 25 million people in the world depend on coffee production, which has a profound contribution to global biodiversity loss through agricultural extensification and intensification. Nevertheless, coffee agroforestry systems have been postulated to serve as an alternative refuge for biodiversity across different regions. We aim to compare bird abundance, diversity, and richness in commercial polyculture coffee systems (i.e., the highest degree of habitat complexity that can be achieved in coffee fields after deforestation) with other coffee agroforestry systems and human modified habitats in Java, Indonesia. We collected data in 21 sites (1228 points) on Java from February to August 2021 using the point sampling method. Via generalised additive models, we tested whether the abundance, diversity, and richness of birds were different between different human modified habitats including other potential predictors such as elevation, distance to protected areas, shade tree richness, and plant diversity. Using the non-metric multidimensional scaling, we tested whether there was a difference in terms of the composition of foraging guilds between habitats. Commercial polyculture coffee fields can sustain levels of bird abundance, diversity, and richness comparable to agroforestry systems under natural forest, and higher than sun coffee and shaded monoculture coffee, and of other human modified habitats such as crop/fruit fields and tree farms. Coffee agroforestry systems have a higher proportion of nectarivores, insectivores, and frugivores than other systems that can sustain high diversity and richness of birds such as paddy fields that mainly have granivores and carnivores. Complex polycultures can represent an avenue for the future of sustainable agriculture in conditions where deforestation rates are high and in crops such as coffee, which maintain high yield in the presence of diverse shade.

Automated summary

Commercial coffee polyculture fields in Java, Indonesia can sustain levels of bird abundance, diversity, and richness comparable to agroforestry systems under natural forest. These complex systems serve as an alternative refuge for biodiversity and have a higher proportion of nectarivores, insectivores, and frugivores compared to other agricultural systems.