Ungrazed seminatural habitats around farms benefit bird conservation without enhancing infectious disease risks

Context
 
Conservation in working landscapes is critical for halting biodiversity declines and ensuring farming system sustainability. However, concerns that wildlife may carry foodborne pathogens has created pressure on farmers to remove habitat and reduce biodiversity, undermining farmland conservation. Nonetheless, simplified farming landscapes may host bird communities that carry higher foodborne disease risks.
 
Objectives
 
We analyzed the effects of local farming practices and surrounding landscapes on bird communities and food-safety risks across 30 California lettuce farms. Specifically, we sought to determine how farmland diversification affects bird diversity, fecal contamination, and foodborne pathogen incidences, thereby identifying potential tradeoffs between managing farms for bird conservation versus food safety.
 
Methods
 
We surveyed birds at 227 point-count locations, quantified fecal contamination along 120 transects, and assayed 601 bird feces for pathogenic E. col..., Study region
Our work focused on three counties in the California Central Coast (i.e., Santa Cruz, San Benito, and Monterey Counties), one of the most productive and economically-important agricultural regions in the United States, especially for fresh produce [1]. Across this region, we selected 30 organic farms as study sites, with farms defined as contiguous lands managed by a single grower or operation. Though farmers often grew many crops (see Table S1 for farm summary statistics), all study sites included lettuce. Lettuce was chosen as our focal crop because prominent foodborne disease outbreaks have been linked to leafy greens, making them a focus of food-safety regulations [2]. In addition, lettuce ranked as the most important agricultural commodity in Monterey and San Benito Counties [3,4] and the seventh most important agricultural commodity in California in 2020 (total value, production, and acreage: ~US$2.3 billion, ~3.3 million tons, and ~200,000 acres, respectively), with ..., , # Ungrazed seminatural habitats around farms benefit bird conservation without enhancing infectious disease risks

All data for associated publication (title above) are included. Specific data include: (1) raw point count data, including birds observed and associated information; (2) point count covariates, including site descriptors; (3) species traits information for every detected species; (4) estimated occupancy data that resulted from applying occupancy models to point count data; (5) estimated abundance data that resulted from applying N mixture models to point count data; (6) derived bird diversity data, obtained after analyzing the abundance results from N mixture models; (7) raw pathogen occurence and fecal density data from transects; (8) aggregated pathogen prevalence data.

Descriptions of the procedures involved are included in the methods description and in the resulting manuscript.

## Description of the Data and file structure

All data are stored in CVS or RDS files. Ea...