Nocturnal insect communities altered by land-use change contribute little to coffee pollination in the Western Ghats, India

Wild insects pollinate numerous agricultural crops, but the role of nocturnal pollinators, while increasingly acknowledged, remains poorly understood. We examined nocturnal insect communities and pollination in agroforests of robusta coffee (Coffea canephora) – a crop that exhibits floral traits suggestive of nocturnal pollination – in India’s Western Ghats mountains. Specifically, we (1) compared nocturnal insect communities of a shaded robusta coffee agroforest and a nearby secondary tropical rainforest using light screens, and (2) assessed nocturnal and diurnal pollination of coffee using floral exclosure experiments in the agroforest and in a former coffee agroforest located within the secondary rainforest. Nocturnal pollinators visiting light screens were 21% fewer in the agroforest than the rainforest, mainly due to reduced numbers of Lepidoptera, Coleoptera, and Diptera in the former. Lepidoptera and Coleoptera differed in genus richness and composition between habitats, with the..., Study site:
This study was conducted at a robusta coffee farm and a secondary tropical rainforest in the Sakleshpur Taluk, Karnataka State, located in the Western Ghats biodiversity hotspot, southern India. 
Insect sampling:
Nocturnal insects were sampled using light screens, which comprised a vertical white 3.24 m2 square screen illuminated by four ultraviolet LEDs, two blue LEDs, and one green and white LED (Fig. 1a), following Brehm (2017). Light screens were set up at dusk (1800 h) and nocturnal insects were inventoried between 2330 and 0130 h. The timing of data collection was determined based on a pilot study in the rainforest comprising 12 screens monitored hourly from 1830 to 0630 h, in which insect accumulation was observed to peak during 2330–0130 h. We compared the nocturnal flying insect communities of the robusta coffee agroforest and secondary tropical rainforest during March–April 2022.  
Pollinator exclusion experiments:
The experiment comprised the ..., , # Nocturnal insect communities altered by land-use change contribute little to coffee pollination in the Western Ghats, India

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.6djh9w18f](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.6djh9w18f)

This dataset contains data and codes for measuring the abundance, diversity and composition of nocturnal insects in coffee plantations and tropical secondary rainforest. It also contains data on pollination experiment and codes to investigate the effect of nocturnal insects in pollinating coffee in actively managed (coffee agroforestry) and abandoned coffee plantations (now secondary rainforest). Kindly refer the following publication for details [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2025.109966 ](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2025.109966 \"Persistent link using digital object identifier\")

## Description of the data and file structure

Data, codes and their file structure

**order_abundance.csv** contains insect counts (number of individual) of corresponding insect order that were sa...,