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.

Treatment description: Poll (Pollinator): 2 randomly selected twigs of the tree where covered with gauze during coffee blossom to exclude pollinators - two randomly selected twigs were marked as control twigs, Vert (Vertebrate Exclosure): The whole coffee tree was covered with a net to exclude vertebrates (birds and bats) - two twigs were selected, Poll/Vert: combination of Poll and Vert on one tree, Control: open control with two selected twigs. On all selected twigs we counted fruitsets and harvested the fruits for quality assessment.....

Supplement to: Classen, Alice; Peters, Marcell Karl; Ferger, Stefan W; Helbig-Bonitz, Maria; Schmack, Julia; Maassen, G; Schleuning, Matthias; Kalko, Elisabeth K V; Böhning-Gaese, Katrin; Steffan-Dewenter, Ingolf (2014): Complementary ecosystem services provided by pest predators and pollinators increase quantity and quality of coffee yields. Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences, 281(1779), 20133148-20133148