Publication Date:
2024-02-16
Description:
Wild animals substantially support crop production by providing ecosystem services, such as pollination and natural pest control. However, the strengths of synergies between ecosystem services and their dependencies on land-use management are largely unknown. Here, we took an experimental approach to test the impact of land-use intensification on both individual and combined pollination and pest control services in coffee production systems at Mount Kilimanjaro. We established a full-factorial pollinator and vertebrate exclosure experiment along a land-use gradient from traditional homegardens (agroforestry systems), shaded coffee plantations to sun coffee plantations (total sample size = 180 coffee bushes). The exclusion of vertebrates led to a reduction in fruit set of ca 9%. Pollinators did not affect fruit set, but significantly increased fruit weight of coffee by an average of 7.4%. We found no significant decline of these ecosystem services along the land-use gradient. Pest control and pollination service were thus complementary, contributing to coffee production by affecting the quantity and quality of a major tropical cash crop across different coffee production systems at Mount Kilimanjaro.
Keywords:
ALTITUDE; Counts; DATE/TIME; Description; Event label; Habitat; Index; KiLi; KiLi_cof2; KiLi_cof3; KiLi_cof4; KiLi_cof5; KiLi_hom1; KiLi_hom2; KiLi_hom4; KiLi_hom5; KiLi_sun1; KiLi_sun2; KiLi_sun3; KiLi_sun4; Kilimanjaro Research Group; Mass; Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania; Number; Plot; Presence/absence; Sample ID; Treatment
Type:
Dataset
Format:
text/tab-separated-values, 69120 data points
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