Acarofauna associated with coffee shrubs in relation to the distance of forest fragments

Predatory mites belonging to the Phytoseiidae family, among them Amblyseius compositus Denmark & Muma, 1973, have been found in coffee plants ( Coffea arabica L.) and adjacent forest fragments in of Lavras, MG, Brazil, associated to the Brevipalpus phoenicis (Geijskes, 1939) (Tenuipalpidae), Which is the vector of the coffee ring spot virus. The biological aspects, fertility life table, predatory activity, and functional and numeric responses, in function of the prey B. phoenicis density, were studied in laboratory at 25 ± 2 o C, 70 ± 10% of RH and 14 hours of photophase. A longevity of 48 days was verified for the adult females. The innate capacity of the predator population's growth (r m ) was 0.119 females/female/day and the mean generation time (T) was 27.9 days. The population doubled every 5.8 days. In bioassays, 20 B. phoenicis mites per coffee leaf arena (3-cm diameter) were offered separately to a specimen of each phase of the predatory mite. It was verified that the female was the most efficient consumer in all development phases of the prey mite, although the nymph also presented good predation. To analyze functional and numeric responses, the prey was offered in densities from 0.14 to 42.3 immature B. phoenicis per cm 2 of arena, the preferred phases for predation . The predatory activity and the oviposition of A. compositus increased according to the increase of prey density, in a positive and highly significant correlation . The regression analysis suggests a type II functional response with maximum predation between 30 and 35 B. phoenicis /cm 2 /female.

This paper evaluates the effects of the period of intercropping of hyacinth beans (Dolichos lab-lab) and jack beans (Canavalia ensiformis) on coffee (Coffea arabica) growth and productivity. The treatments were the two legume species combined in a factorial design with four intercropping periods (30, 60, 90 e 120 days after planting). The control treatment consisted of plots with coffee sole crop. The experiment was carried out for two years at Rio Pomba, Minas Gerais state, Brazil. The biomass of legumes and the growth and yield of coffee shrubs was quantified in each year. There was a positive linear accumulation of the legume dry matter as intercropping period increased. On the first year, jack beans (2.65 t ha-1) accumulated more biomass than hyacinth beans (1.89 t ha-1). On the second year, hyacinth beans accumulated 5.74 t ha-1 of dry biomass and jack beans 2.89 t ha-1 at 120 days. On the first year, the increasing of intercropping period with hyacinth beans resulted in a decrease of the coffee shrub canopy diameter and number of leaves. On the second year, the coffee shrubs intercropped with hyacinth beans grew more than the ones intercropped with jack beans. Compared to the control treatment, the intercropping reduced coffee yield, presenting different effects on them.

SummaryAgricultural landscapes provide the essential ecosystem service of food to growing human populations; at the same time, agricultural expansion to increase crop production results in forest fragmentation, degrading many other forest‐dependent ecosystem services. However, surprisingly little is known about the role that forest fragments play in the provision of ecosystem services and how fragmentation affects landscape multifunctionality at scales relevant to land management decisions.We measured the provision of six ecosystem services (crop production, pest regulation, decomposition, carbon storage, soil fertility and water quality regulation) in soya bean fields at different distances from adjacent forest fragments that differed in isolation and size across an agricultural landscape inQuebec,Canada.We observed significant effects of distance‐from‐forest, fragment isolation and fragment size on crop production, insect pest regulation, and decomposition.Distance‐from‐forest and fragment isolation had unique influences on service provision for each of the ecosystem services we measured. For example, pest regulation was maximized adjacent to forest fragments, while crop production was maximized at intermediate distances‐from‐forest. As a consequence, landscape multifunctionality depended on landscape heterogeneity: the range of field and forest fragment types present.We also observed strong negative and positive relationships between ecosystem services that were more prevalent at greater distances‐from‐forest.Synthesis and applications. Our study is one of the first to empirically measure and model the effects of forest fragments on the simultaneous provision of multiple ecosystem services in an agro‐ecosystem at the landscape and field scales relevant to landowners and managers. Our results demonstrate that forest fragments, irrespective of their size, can affect the provision of multiple ecosystem services in surrounding fields, but that this effect is mediated by fragment isolation across the landscape. Our results also suggest that managing habitat fragmentation and landscape structure will improve our ability to optimize ecosystem service provision and create multifunctional agricultural landscapes.

Anthropogenic habitat fragmentation has well-established deleterious effects on populations and communities of native vertebrates, but the mechanisms underlying population decline under fragmentation remain poorly understood. Most studies of vertebrates in anthropogenically-fragmented habitats have focused on population density, demographics or fecundity. Relatively little attention has been given to indices of health status, body condition or physiological stress. In this study, 30 populations of a small marsupial, the agile antechinus (Antechinus agilis), living in anthropogenically-fragmented forest patches were sampled in two years (2007 and 2008). Immediately after sampling in each fragment, a population in a matched control site in similar, but unfragmented forest (a 'pseudofragment') was sampled. Indices of population density (relative abundance), estimated fat reserves (mass-size residuals), health status (erythrocyte variables), parasite load (simplified ectoparasite counts and eosinophil percentages) and chronic physiological stress (total and differential immune cell counts) were examined. Relative abundances were lower and parasite load indices higher in fragmented than continuous forest. Fragment populations displayed indications of regenerative anaemia, which is related to poor health status and potentially caused by chronic stress, frequent blood loss or heavy parasite loads. Estimated fat reserves were higher in fragment than continuous forest populations. Nonetheless, differential leukocyte counts suggested that chronic physiological stress was greater (i.e. greater neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratios) (N:L) in populations in fragments. Anthropogenic fragmentation effects are not often distinguished in the ecological literature from those of co-occurring processes, such as habitat loss and degradation. To investigate the effects of these processes, environmental factors were examined that were thought to have a potential influence on agile antechinus (e.g. fragment patch core area, proportion of edge habitat, isolation, woody debris abundance, shrub density etc). Relative abundance of agile antechinus was positively correlated with forest patch core area and native tree-cover within a 0.5 km radius of a study site. Estimated fat reserves, particularly in males, were greater in populations in fragments with a smaller core area, but statistical modelling indicated that the effect was an indirect one: males had greater estimated fat reserves where the abundance of conspecifics was lower, suggesting that this metric was responding to intraspecific competition and per capita food availability. Health status, indexed by erythrocyte indicators of regenerative anaemia,was positively associated with greater microhabitat heterogeneity, and abundance of shrubs, logs and native trees other than Eucalyptus species. Female abundances were lower in edge habitat ( 80 m from edge), and females had higher chronic stress indicators (N:L) where fragments were more highly dissected by edge habitat. Although parasite load indices and male N:L were higher in fragment than continuous forest sites, the environmental factors responsible were not identified. The study has demonstrated that anthropogenic habitat fragmentation, loss and degradation can have broadly negative effects on a native vertebrate, not only on its population density, but also in terms of health status and chronic physiological stress. This is a serious concern from a conservation management perspective, because chronic stress has pronounced fitness-reducing effects in vertebrates, including reduced reproductive investment, fecundity and survivorship.

Coffee crop, highly important worldwide, is one of the main commodities in Brazilian exports. However, due to climate changes, its cultivation is currently demanding irrigation techniques. Current assay evaluates the effect of different irrigation water levels on the development and productivity of coffee shrubs in predominant soil and climate conditions of the town of Muzambinho, in the southern region of the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. The experiment was performed in July 2013 on a coffee plantation, planted with coffee shrubs, cultivar Red Catuai IAC/144, by drip irrigation. Experiment design consisted of randomized blocks with four replications and four treatments, or rather, different irrigation water depths: 0 (without irrigation), 50, 100 and 125% of ET0. Productivity, vegetal growth and distribution of the radicular system were evaluated after 12 months. Treatments did not affect vegetal growth. Better quantity and distribution of the radicular system were detected at 100% irrigation level, with a productionof 55 sacks.ha-1 or a 45% gain when compared to that in non-irrigated areas. Key words: Management, coffee, drip system.

The Espirito Santo is the biggest Brazilian producer of coffee conilon, highlighting the predominance of monocultures in the northern region. Some farmers insert tree species in plantations, modifying the soil and climate conditions of the agroecosystems. However, studies on the effect of this practice in relation to soil fauna are still incipient. The objective of this work was study the effect of forestation in conilon coffee plantations on meso-and macrofauna of the soil in the northern of Espirito Santo state. In the rainy and dry seasons, the meso-and macrofauna was sampled using pitfall traps installed in three coffee plants agroecosystems: monoculture, intercropped with Australian cedar (Toona ciliata M. Romer), and intercropped with teak (Tectona grandis L. f.). Subsequently the organisms of fauna were identified in major taxonomic groups. We collected a total of 10,451 invertebrates on the soil surface, belonging to 20 taxonomic groups, mostly during the rainy season. Regardless of the period and system, Collembola and Formicidae were the predominant groups on the soil surface. The richness of taxonomic groups was higher during the dry season in all agroecosystems. In the rainy season, the Shannon diversity index (H’) and Uniformity index (U) were higher (p <0.10) in consortium with cedar compared to other systems, with values of 0.45 and 0.68, respectively. The forestation of coffee plantation with Australian cedar provides greater availability of resources (feeding and habitat, for example) to soil fauna, being less vulnerable to seasonal climate changes.

Forest-to-pasture conversion is known to cause global losses in plant and animal diversity, yet impacts of livestock management after such conversion on vital microbial communities in adjoining natural ecosystems remain poorly understood. We examined how pastoral land management practices impact soil microorganisms in adjacent native forest fragments, by comparing bacterial communities sampled along 21 transects bisecting pasture-forest boundaries. Our results revealed greater bacterial taxon richness in grazed pasture soils and the reduced dispersal of pasture-associated taxa into adjacent forest soils when land uses were separated by a boundary fence. Relative abundance distributions of forest-associated taxa (i.e., Proteobacteria and Nitrospirae) and a pasture-associated taxon (i.e., Firmicutes) also suggest a greater impact of pastoral land uses on forest fragment soil bacterial communities when no fence is present. Bacterial community richness and composition were most related to changes in soil physicochemical variables commonly associated with agricultural fertilization, including concentrations of Olsen P, total P, total Cd, delta 15 N and the ratio of C:P and N:P. Overall, our findings demonstrate clear, and potentially detrimental effects of agricultural disturbance on bacterial communities in forest soils adjacent to pastoral land. We provide evidence that simple land management decisions, such as livestock exclusion, can mitigate the effects of agriculture on adjacent soil microbial communities.

This article has as main objectives to characterize the socioeconomic and environmental aspects of conventional and ecological coffee (agroforestry) of Pontal do Paranapanema, region in areas of rural settlements production systems, evaluating the sustainability of these agroecosystems and the opportunities for income generation and food security to families. Despite the fact that the coffee produced in agroforestry systems do not receive agrochemical applications and present a high diversity of species, characterizing it as an ecologically-based coffee, farmers have not achieved better market prices determined by some factors. The collaboration of agroforestry in family income could be multiplied by five only if there was a fair payment for the agroecological coffee produced. Both the intrinsic biodiversity (within the agro-ecosystem ), and the extrinsic ( found in the vicinity of the agroecosystem), fragments of native forest and forest matrix, in this case in particular the State Park Morro do Diabo, have contributed to local agriculture. Resilience (lower incidence of pests, recovery from frost and hailstorms), self - sufficiency and productivity achieved by agroecosystems studied are directly related to the biodiversity of the local forest and biodiverse agroecosystems. Thus, it was found that households in agroecological transition are fulfilling the function ofconserving natural resources, diversification of the rural landscape, promoting food safety and rescue of agroecological practices. Keywords: Agroecological Transition ; Agroforestry; Ecological Coffee;Agroecology.

Abstract: This study aimed to present a list of the species of frugivorous butterflies occurring in Atlantic Forests, in the Conservation Units: National Forest of Chapecó (FLONA), Ecological Station of Mata Preta (ESEC) and State Park of Araucárias (PAEAR) and adjacent forest fragments, located in the western region of the state of Santa Catarina. Three samplings were conducted between December 2017 and March 2018, totaling 24 days of collection in each sampling area. Van Someren-Rydon traps were used to capture frugivorous butterflies. There were 4,231 frugivorous butterflies belonging to four subfamilies, 12 tribes and 49 species. In all, 37 species of frugivorous butterflies were sampled in FLONA and 29 in adjacent forest fragments. In ESEC, 29 species and 33 in adjacent forest fragments. In PAEAR, 33 species and 28 in adjacent forest fragments. Of the total species registered, 15 species are new records for the state of Santa Catarina and 11 are new records for the western region of the state. The most abundant species for FLONA were: Manataria hercyna (Hübner, 1821) and Hermeuptychia sp. In ESEC, were Hermeuptychia sp. and Yphthimoides ordinaria (Freitas, Kaminski &amp; Mielke, 2012). In PAEAR, greater abundance of Forsterinaria quantius (Godart, 1824) and Eryphanes reevesii (Doubleday, 1849) were verified. For the adjacent forest fragments to Conservation Units, there was a greater abundance of Hermeuptychia sp., Moneuptychia soter (Butler, 1877), Morpho epistrophus (Fabricius, 1796) e Forsterinaria quantius (Godart, 1824). Satyrinae presented higher richness (S = 34) and abundance (90.58%) in all areas sampled. The rarefaction and extrapolation curves for the Conservation Units and adjacent forest fragments showed a greater rise in the FLONA and PAEAR sampling units and their adjacent forest fragments. The estimated sampling coverage for Conservation Unit and forest fragments was above 97%. The richness calculated through the Jackknife 1 estimator, for the FLONA and PAEAR samplings, presented a value of 50.75 and 37.09, respectively. The fauna of frugivorous butterflies from this region, first investigated in areas of Conservation Units, showed to be expressive and well represented in the Atlantic Forest Biome, indicating its potential as a refuge for biodiversity.

Landscape structure, habitat fragmentation, and the ecology of insects

There is a clear crisis in the maintenance of global biodiversity worldwide. Climate change and widespread habitat loss, degradation and fragmentation are exerting strong, landscape-scale pressures on biodiversity. Negative impacts of these stressors are seen at all levels of biological organization, but studies at the level of community and food webs are relatively rare. This is in large part due to the large spatial and temporal scales at which food webs operate. Natural microcosms (food webs operating at small spatial scales) have been used to experimentally approach complex theoretical and applied questions in ecology, and have provided many important insights to date. In particular, moss micro-arthropod communities have been used extensively for the study of the effects of habitat fragmentation. Here, we used this ecosystem in a replicated, manipulative experiment to study the combined effects of warming and habitat fragmentation on community and food web structure. In order to do this, we developed tools to estimate diet of Oribatid mites, which were one of the most abundant and diverse taxa in the food web. Stable isotope techniques and analysis of mouthpart morphology allowed us to describe a food web for a moss-microarthropod ecosystem from south eastern Australia. The food web comprised over 100 taxa organized into a suite of feeding guilds: herbivores, fungivores, detritivores, lichenivores and predators. The speciose nature of the system is a strength, and the challenge of dealing with the taxonomy, data storage and food web analysis was met by development of a publicly available taxonomy database/tool, and a food web analysis package. We described temporal variation in a suite of food web attributes across one summer and winter. We found marked differences in food web structure between sampling occasions, with patterns suggestive of temperature- and humidity-driven changes in resource availability. To test the generality of food web structure in our system as compared to other ecosystems, food web attributes were compared to those of a large compilation of food webs from around the world. Comparison revealed similarities in food web structure to other communities across a range of spatial scales and ecosystems. Dissimilarities were also found and discussed. We concluded that the moss-microarthropod system provides an adequate model for achieving a deeper understanding of processes in community ecology. Our experiments assess the assembly of moss-microarthropod communities after an extreme high-temperature event, against a back-drop of altered climate, and in the context of habitat fragmentation. Data provide initial indications that isolated habitats may be more susceptible to negative impacts of warming than less isolated habitats. Variability of responses among replicate landscapes was considerable, with some being relatively resilient. Future understanding of the underpinnings of this resilience could point to management options for resisting rapid environmental change. Our results highlight the value of dispersal in disturbed landscapes and of disturbance-buffered communities in the face of climate change. Given the importance of synergies between disturbances as drivers of biodiversity loss, and considering the paucity of data assessing the combined impacts of climate change and habitat fragmentation on food webs, further research must be carried out in this area. This could build and draw on the model system we have validated for that purpose, enabled by the suite of new tools generated here.

Tropical cyclones reshape the structure, composition and successional trajectories of forest ecosystems. Climate warming is expected to increase the intensity and impact of these storms while habitat fragmentation further modifies trajectories of response. Many studies over the past decade suggest that tropical forest fragments are locked into a future dominated by edge-favoured pioneer species, dramatic loss of late-successional, large-fruited species, and invasion by exotic weeds. However, this study shows that severely storm-damaged and fragmented tropical forests are remarkably resilient, with a capacity for rebuilding and maintaining plant species composition and diversity. My study followed two severe tropical cyclone events, Cyclones Larry (2006) and Yasi (2011) in the Australian Wet Tropics. To date, no comparable investigation has measured the effects of successive severe tropical cyclone events on different forest habitats in lowland rainforest. My study investigated: 1) immediate effects of a second severe cyclone on the structural characteristics of different forest habitat types; 2) family and species-level responses to damage and short-term survival rates; 3) plant community and species-level assemblages across different forest habitats; and 4) life-history successional characteristics of species for different habitat types. My results showed all trees sustained some level of damage (i.e. minor to severe) due to the effects of these two severe cyclone events. About 75% of trees had their main stem snapped compared to 11% of trees with major breakage of branches and less than 4% were uprooted. 10% of all trees sustained only minor damage including partial defoliation, twig-snapping and minor branches snapped. Snapping of tree trunks was higher in fragmented forest compared to continuous forest whereas snapping of major branches was significantly higher in continuous forest and edges. Trees resprouted within weeks of the cyclone and 96% of standing stems continued to show vigourous growth after eighteen months. Although there was a dramatic loss of large canopy and emergent trees during Cyclone Larry five years earlier, 83% of all stems in my plots were identified as belonging to mid-late and late successional species, while only 13% of stems were early-mid successional species. These stems are mainly saplings (≤ 10-20cm DBH) which have survived successive severe cyclone events within the understorey 'vine tangles.' I found no evidence for proliferation of early successional or pioneer species in any of the habitat types, including fragmented forest sites, within the time-frame of this study. No evidence was found for elevated levels of exotic weed invasion following these events with these species comprising less than 1% of total assemblages. All forest habitat types showed an unexpected capacity for resistance and resilience following the combined effects of fragmentation and two severe tropical cyclones. My data suggest that forest habitat types influence successional life-history characteristics but are not driving species assemblages in fragmented forests towards proliferation of short-lived, edge-favoured generalists (i.e. pioneer species).

Man has been using land since the beginning of human civilization. Over the time, growing population demanded more land which expanded its use, so forests that share their borders with built-up or agricultural land use are prone to further degradation than the forests that share their borders with non-forest, natural land cover e.g., wetland, water bodies, grassland etc. The increased use led to increase in the rate of degradation and fragmentation of forest land. Deforestation is the prime cause for the forest land fragmentation and dense forests are very sensitive to this phenomenon where roads are one of the major causes of fragmentation. The present study focusses on the land use dynamics and forest landscape fragmentation of Shopian district of hill state of Jammu and Kashmir from 1995 to 2015. The study is based on remotely sensed data using landscape fragmentation model in GIS. The analysis shows that agricultural and built-up land use has continued to increase at the cost of rich forest cover which has not only significantly decreased but is in the deplorable state. Forest land fragmentation analysis revealed the increase in deforestation and the degradation of the dense forest into small and isolated patches.

Faunal diversity of the oribatid and mesostigmatid mites was investigated in four habitats (woodland, hemy-xerophiticshrubs, degraded steppe and perennial calcareous and oligotrophic grassland) of Saskhori limestone quarry. Mining processes are not yet started and semi-natural ecosystems are still preserved. Fifty one species of oribatidmites and nine morphospecies of mesostigmatid mites were identified. Two species of mesostigmatid mites Zerconmonigenus Blaszak, 1972and Trachytesstammeni HirschmannetZirngiebl-Nicol, 1969are new records for Caucasian fauna and two more - Proprioseiopsismessor (Wainstein, 1960) and Neoseiulus montanus (Wainstein, 1962a)(both Gamasina) are new for Georgia. Highest number of species was recorded on perennial calcareous and oligotrophic grasslands (43), which were followed by forests (37) and shrubs (25). Degraded steppes were extremely poor by soil mite species – only three oribatid species and no mesostigmatans were recorded there. Overall faunal composition indicateshabitat specific anthropogenic disturbance in studied habitats and less disturbed harboring important rare and sensitive species of mites.

Research evaluating the impact of different management systems coffee are essential for determining soil quality. The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of production systems for organic coffee and agroforestry on stocks of carbon, nitrogen and organic matter quality in two farms in the region Caparao- Espirito Santo- Brazil. In farm 1 systems were evaluated primary forest, organic coffee and conventional coffee. In farm 2 systems were evaluated secondary forest, organic coffee intercropped with inga, organic coffee intercropped with leucaena and inga, organic coffee intercropped cedar and conventional coffee full sun. Soil samples were collected in canopy projection coffee in the depths 0-10, 10-20, 20-40, 40-60 and 60-100 cm. The C and N stock reflected the management history in relation to forest areas, with the greatest impact in the 0-10 cm. This depth, to the farm 1, the conventional coffee obtained reductions of 27.3 % and 14.9 % respectively in C and N stocks in relation to organic coffee. For farm 2, reductions in C and N stocks the coffee conventional full sun in relation to agroforestry coffee were 22.1 % and 31.4 %, respectively. The C stocks accumulated were reduced in coffee systems in 28.6 % and 17.4 % respectively in relation to primary and secondary forests. The mineralizable C content was higher in the soil surface layers and in the organic coffee systems compared to conventional coffee, in the farm 2. The coffee agroforestry system provided higher carbon management index in relation to organic coffee without consortium and conventional coffee, providing better soil quality.