Avian Response to Hurricane Maria in Coffee Plantations

Insights on impacts and resiliency of avian species with respect to hurricanes in the Caribbean have largely focused on responses measured in protected habitats.  We assessed avian responses in non-protected habitat, specifically shade-restored coffee plantations, because their structural complexity retains many attributes of secondary forests, and may contribute to landscape scale species resiliency.  We tallied species richness and estimated occupancy probability of 12 resident avian species, after adjusting for imperfect detection, to assess the impact of hurricane Maria (20 September 2017) in shade-restored coffee plantations.  For five of those species, we also estimated local colonization and extinction probabilities to assess their prospect of rebounding (resiliency) in the context of two stages of shade restoration.  We used survey data collected March-June 2015-2017 (pre-hurricane) and 2018 (post-hurricane) in 58 coffee farms and satellite imagery to assess vegetation structure...