(Alouatta palliata), kinkajous (Potus flavus), margays (Leopardus wiedii), mice
(several species), opossums (Didelphisspp.), pumas (Puma concolor), raccoons
(Procyon lotor), and squirrels (Sciurusspp.) (Estrada et al. 1993; Gallina et al.
1996; Gonzalez 1999a). Many of these mammal species are adapted to an arbo-
real life, seeking shelter or building nests in the shade trees and feeding on the
flowers, leaves, and fruits of the shade canopy, and would not be present if the
shade canopy were absent. Although most of the species are generalists, the
presence of a few endangered mammalian species in shaded coffee plantations
in Mexico, such as the tamandua anteater (Tamandua mexicanus), river otter
(Lutra longicaudis), Mexican porcupine (Sphiggurus mexicanus), and margay
(Leopardus wiedii), suggests that traditional coffee systems could play an impor-
tant role in the conservation of forest species threatened by deforestation and
habitat loss (Gallina et al. 1996). However, it is important to note that many
of the mobile animals in coffee plantations are likely to forage over large areas,
including forest patches, and their survival may be more closely linked to the
availability of forest habitat in the region than to the availability of the shaded
coffee plantation itself. This factor is important when considering biodiversity
baseline studies involving specific land use types.
Shaded coffee plantations are widely known to harbor a diverse and
abundant avifauna. For example, studies in the coffee-growing region of
Colombia have reported 170 bird species using shaded coffee plantations,
representing roughly 10 percent of the known bird species in this country
(Botero and Baker 2001). The high avifaunal richness in shaded coffee
plantations includes a mixture of bird species characteristic of open and
second-growth habitats, forest generalists and forest edge species, that
belong primarily to frugivorous, insectivorous, and nectarivorous guilds
(Greenberg et al. 1997; Moguel and Toledo 1999). In general, the bird
diversity in shaded coffee plantations is less than that in the original forests
and is distinct in terms of its species composition: only rarely are specialized
forest bird species (such as those associated with forest understory) found in
coffee plantations in Central and South America (Wunderle and Latta 1996;
Greenberg et al. 1997). For example, in a study of bird populations in Cen-
tral Guatemala, Greenberg et al. (1997) found that forest habitats had the
highest number of species (87–122), followed by shaded coffee plantations
(73) and sun coffee plantations (65). However, in other areas, studies have
shown that the bird diversity in coffee plantations can be similar to (or even
greater than) that of intact forest, as was found in a comparison of bird
diversity in rustic and Inga-shaded coffee plantations in eastern Chiapas,
Mexico (Greenberg et al. 1997), and in rustic coffee systems in Mexico
(Moguel and Toledo, 1999) and northern Panama (Roberts et al. 2000a,
2000b).
In the New World, shaded coffee plantations are also critical habitats for
large numbers of migratory birds that arrive from the north at the beginning
212 III. The Biodiversity of Agroforestry Systems