The effect of agricultural management on bird communities in tropical Africa: implications for biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services

Agroforestry, the practice of growing crops beneath a canopy of shade trees, is common in tropical regions, and has the potential to provide habitat for wildlife whilst maintaining agricultural production. However, the increasing demand for commodity crops is driving intensification of agriculture in the tropics, which results in the conversion of agroforestry systems into monocultures. This conversion to monocultures drives declines in biodiversity in these habitats, which may in turn cause a drop-off in yields due to loss of ecosystem services. However, the effects of agricultural management on animal communities and the downstream effects on productivity are poorly understood, especially in the Afrotropics. During this talk, I will present the main findings from the analyses of data collected over 3 years in 28 cocoa farms with varying management in Cameroon. In these farms we surveyed bird communities and arthropods, and investigated wildlife-driven ecosystem services. The analyses of these data involved using novel statistical approaches such as hierarchical modelling, data integration and community modelling, to tackle the issue of understanding wildlife communities in complex habitats from imperfect field data. During this talk I will discuss our results on the influence of agricultural management on bird and arthropod communities in African cocoa farms, and the consequences in terms of ecosystem services and biodiversity conservation. Additionally, I will introduce my current projects with the Swiss Ornithological Institute, which include further work in Afrotropical agroforestry, as well as investigating effects of land-use change in Sub-Saharan Africa on migratory birds during their wintering period.