Publications by authors named "Ruth E Bennett"

With a global footprint of 10 million hectares across 12.5 million farms, coffee is among the world's most traded commodities. The coffee industry has launched a variety of initiatives designed to reduce coffee's contribution to climate change and biodiversity loss and enhance the socio-economic conditions of coffee producers.

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Article Synopsis
  • Cocoa agriculture is expanding to meet chocolate demand but poses a threat to biodiversity, particularly among bird species.
  • Studies indicate that bird diversity significantly declines in low shade cocoa farms, while farms with more canopy cover can maintain similar diversity levels as nearby forests, albeit with different bird communities.
  • The findings highlight the importance of conserving forests and promoting mixed-shade agroforestry to support diverse biological communities in cocoa-growing landscapes.
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Tropical forests in the Americas are undergoing rapid conversion to commercial agriculture, and many migratory bird species that use these forests have experienced corresponding populations declines. Conservation research for migratory birds in the tropics has focused overwhelmingly on shade coffee plantations and adjacent forest, but both cover types are now in decline, creating an urgent need to evaluate conservation opportunities in other agricultural systems. Here we compare how a community of 42 Neotropical migratory bird species and a subset of five conservation-priority species differ in usage and habitat associations among a secondary forest baseline and four expanding commercial plantation systems in Guatemala: African oil palm, teak, rubber, and mixed-native hardwoods.

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