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Fragmentation and Management of Ethiopian Moist Evergreen Forest Drive Compositional Shifts of Insect Communities Visiting Wild Arabica Coffee Flowers

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Abstract

Coffea arabica is an indigenous understorey shrub of the moist evergreen Afromontane forest of SW Ethiopia. Coffee cultivation here occurs under different forest management intensities, ranging from almost no intervention in the ‘forest coffee’ system to far-reaching interventions that include the removal of competing shrubs and selective thinning of the upper canopy in the ‘semi-forest coffee’ system. We investigated whether increasing forest management intensity and fragmentation result in impacts upon potential coffee pollination services through examining shifts in insect communities that visit coffee flowers. Overall, we netted 2,976 insect individuals on C. arabica flowers, belonging to sixteen taxonomic groups, comprising 10 insect orders. Taxonomic richness of the flower-visiting insects significantly decreased and pollinator community changed with increasing forest management intensity and fragmentation. The relative abundance of honey bees significantly increased with increasing forest management intensity and fragmentation, likely resulting from the introduction of bee hives in the most intensively managed forests. The impoverishment of the insect communities through increased forest management intensity and fragmentation potentially decreases the resilience of the coffee production system as pollination increasingly relies on honey bees alone. This may negatively affect coffee productivity in the long term as global pollination services by managed honey bees are expected to decline under current climate change scenarios. Coffee agroforestry management practices should urgently integrate pollinator conservation measures.

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Acknowledgments

This research was carried out within the framework of the Institutional University Collaboration partnership between Jimma University and universities in Flanders (JU-IUC), which was funded by the University Development Cooperation of the Flemish Interuniversity Council (VLIR-UOS). We gratefully credit the landowners/farmers for their permission and guidance, and Chemeda Abdeta, Daniel Damtew, and Sabit Abadiga for their assistance during data collection, labeling, and pollinators identification. The valuable comments and suggestions of the editor in chief Rebecca A. Efroymson and four anonymous reviewers are highly appreciated. The authors received funding from the Efico Foundation/King Baudouin Foundation for putting environmental management science into practice. To date, thirty households have received bee hives and bee keeping training in an effort to diversify coffee farms, increase income, and conserve forests and ecosystem services in Ethiopia.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division Ecology, Evolution and Biodiversity Conservation, University of Leuven, Kasteelpark Arenberg 31-2435, 3001, Leuven, Belgium

    Gezahegn Berecha, Raf Aerts & Olivier Honnay

  2. Department of Horticulture and Plant Science, Jimma University, P.O. Box 378, Jimma, Ethiopia

    Gezahegn Berecha

  3. Division Forest, Nature and Landscape, University of Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200E-2411, 3001, Leuven, Belgium

    Raf Aerts & Bart Muys

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  1. Gezahegn Berecha
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  2. Raf Aerts
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Correspondence to Gezahegn Berecha.

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Berecha, G., Aerts, R., Muys, B. et al. Fragmentation and Management of Ethiopian Moist Evergreen Forest Drive Compositional Shifts of Insect Communities Visiting Wild Arabica Coffee Flowers. Environmental Management 55, 373–382 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-014-0393-9

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