Credit: Çağan Şekercioğlu, University of Utah.
The orange-billed nightingale-thrush is an insect-eating bird that lives on Costa Rican “shade” coffee plantations. A new University of Utah study indicates that, compared with open farmland, wooded “agroforests” like shade coffee and cacao plantations promote bird diversity and also the “ecosystem services” birds provide to human society, including insect control, spreading seeds and pollinating crops.