Land use and climate shape amphibian multidimensional diversity and conservation in a coffee agroforestry landscape, Western Ghats

Vijay Karthick , Siva Dass, Vishal Gopal Sadekar, Rohit Naniwadekar, Anand M Osuri

Shade coffee agroforests are potential refuges for biodiversity in human-modified tropicallandscapes. However, biodiversity is influenced by coffee cultivation methods and climates, bothof which vary widely and are increasingly dynamic. One significant but understudied dynamic isthe shift in cultivated species from arabica (Coffea arabica) to robusta (C. canephora), whichalongside deforestation and climate change, is reshaping global coffee landscapes. Wecompared land uses (secondary rainforest, arabica coffee, robusta coffee) and climate zones(coffee in wet vs. dry zones) for amphibian abundance, community composition,multidimensional diversity (taxonomic, functional, phylogenetic), and ecologically-sensitive andconservation-priority species in India’s Western Ghats mountains. We sampled amphibiansusing line transects (total 12.9 km), collected primary and secondary data on 12 functional traits,geographic distributions, threat status, phylogeny, and estimated multidimensional diversity(Hill-Chao numbers q=0-2) and species occurrence probabilities across land uses and climatezones. While overall amphibian abundance and richness (q=0) were similar across land usesand climates, the secondary rainforest had distinct community composition, highermultidimensional diversity (q=1, 2), and higher occurrence probabilities of stream breeding andthreatened-endemic species than coffee. Amphibian multidimensional diversity (q=1, 2) wasgenerally higher in arabica than robusta coffee in both climate zones, and alongside streambreeding and threatened-endemic species was lower in dry than wet zones. Our findingssuggest that arabica-to-robusta conversion and climate drying can diminish amphibianmultidimensional diversity, and underscore the value of safeguarding and restoring forests andstreams for conserving ecologically-sensitive and conservation priority species in changingcoffee landscapes.