Ruth Bennett

Smithsonian Institution · Migratory Bird Center

Tropical forests in the Americas are undergoing rapid conversion to commercial agriculture, and many migratory bird species that use these forests have experienced corresponding populations declines. Conservation research for migratory birds in the tropics has focused overwhelmingly on shade coffee plantations and adjacent forest, but both cover ty...

Male and female animals often segregate spatially among habitats and landscapes outside of breeding seasons, but it is unclear to what extent conservation efforts account for sexual segregation. Overlooking this phenomenon may result in conservation plans that don't meet the needs of both sexes, especially when resources or threats vary spatially....

To meet the growing demand for chocolate, cocoa (Theobroma cacao) agriculture is expanding and intensifying. Although this threatens tropical forests, cocoa sustainability initiatives largely overlook biodiversity conservation. To inform these initiatives, we analyzed how cocoa agriculture affects bird diversity at farm and landscape scales with a...

Sustainability certifications, or eco-labels, inform consumers about the environmental conservation attributes of a product and must be updated to accommodate advances in scientific knowledge and changes in market conditions. We evaluated the willingness to pay (WTP) for sustainability attributes of the Bird Friendly® coffee certification and found...

Protecting biodiversity while sustaining agricultural production is one of our greatest modern challenges. The dominant conservation paradigm in tropical coffee-growing regions involves land-sharing, wherein wildlife-friendly shade trees are integrated into plantations. Meanwhile, the value of land-sparing approaches that combine intensified farmin...

Arabica coffee (Coffea arabica) is cultivated throughout the tropics and is essential to local economies. Globally, most Arabica coffee is farmed in high-density monocultures despite evidence that agroforestry systems with shade trees can increase resiliency of coffee productivity and associated livelihoods. Open questions remain, however, on how A...

Introduction Coffee is a ubiquitous global commodity that is cultivated with a wide range of practices, each with different, yet poorly understood trade‐offs between management intensity, yield, and biodiversity. For example, monocultures prioritise coffee production, but do not necessarily deliver the highest coffee yields, nor the greatest profit...

Eco-labels inform consumers about the sustainable attributes of a product, but consumer face challenges to differentiate and select for specific attributes. Certification programs are similarly challenged to incentivize adoption of sustainable practices in product supply chains when consumer ability to differentiate sustainable attributes is low. T...

With a global footprint of 10 million hectares across 12.5 million farms, coffee is among the world’s most traded commodities. The coffee industry has launched a variety of initiatives designed to reduce coffee’s contribution to climate change and biodiversity loss and enhance the socio-economic conditions of coffee producers. We systematically rev...

The Golden-winged Warbler (Vermivora chyrsoptera) and Blue-winged Warbler (Vermivora cyanoptera) are both Neotropical migratory species of elevated conservation concern that overlap in distribution on their Central American wintering grounds, yet the extent to which they overlap in terms of habitat use is unknown, potentially hindering conservation...

Despite advances in tracking technologies, migration strategies remain poorly studied for many small-bodied passerines. Understanding variation within a migration strategy is important as variation impacts a population’s resilience to environmental change. Timing, pathway, and stopovers vary based on intrinsic and extrinsic factors that impact indi...

Intraspecific variation in animal coloration arises from the expression of heritable genes under different selection pressures and stochastic processes. Documenting patterns of intraspecific color variation is an important first step to understanding the mechanisms that determine species appearance. Within the heron genus Butorides, plumage colorat...

Resumen Ejecutivo: El Plan de Conservación para la Temporada no Reproductiva de la Reinita Alidorada describe la ecología no reproductiva de la especie y propone acciones concretas para mantener el hábitat en toda su área estacionaria no reproductiva (en lo sucesivo, área de invernada). El plan está destinado a conservacionistas, propietarios y ad...

Specialty coffee markets that recognize coffee-quality price premiums can improve business conditions for smallholders and promote agro-ecological practices. We studied the Relationship Coffee Model (RCM), a business model that supports long-term partnerships between coffee buyers and smallholders based on product quality. We examined how biophysic...

Detailed knowledge of migratory connectivity can facilitate effective conservation of Neotropical migrants by helping biologists understand where and when populations may be most limited. We studied the migratory behavior and non-breeding distribution of two closely related species of conservation concern, the Golden-winged Warbler (Vermivora chrys...

Establishing migratory connectivity between breeding and non-breeding sites of populations of migratory birds is crucial to their effective management, but the use of conventional tracking tags is not an option for most small passerines. For declining species like Golden-winged Warblers (Vermivora chrysoptera), it is especially important to determi...

The Golden-winged Warbler Non-breeding Season Conservation Plan (Chapter 4 of the Golden-winged Warbler Conservation Plan) describes the non-breeding ecology of the Golden-winged Warbler and proposes concrete actions to maintain habitat throughout its stationary non-breeding range (hereafter winter range). The plan is intended for use by conservati...

Populations of Red-throated Caracaras (Ibycter americanus) have been extirpated or are in serious decline throughout Middle America. We describe the first nest outside South America and provide only the third nest description for the species. We observed four adults and one immature Red-throated Caracara provide cooperative care to a single nestlin...

The global population of the Neotropical migrant Golden-winged Warbler (Vermivora chrysoptera) has declined steadily over the past fifty years. While factors influencing this decline have been well researched on the breeding grounds, little is known about the distribution and habitat requirements of this warbler on its stationary non-breeding range...