Habitat description and vegetation inventories
The principal vegetation types in the study area, identified in infrared satellite images
(Carta 2005 Project, National Program for Aerospace Missions and Remote Sensing),
included cacao agroforests, banana and pineapple monocultures, subsistence crops (corn),
secondary forest fragments, living fence rows, pasture with isolated trees and riparian
forest (Fig. 1). To estimate woody plant diversity and abundance in these vegetation types,
we established line transects and circular plots in which we identified trees to species. A
total of 7.22 ha was inventoried to assess tree species diversity and the composition of trees
in each habitat (Table 2). These inventories included three riparian forest segments (0.2,
0.2 and 0.35 ha), 5 ha of pasture with isolated trees, 0.9 ha of living fence rows, and 0.57 ha
of cacao agroforests. We used the line transect method to sample vegetation in living fence
rows with 150 m · 5 m transects randomly placed within longer fence rows. Within the
riparian forest, a 50 m x 10 m transect was placed perpendicular to the river or stream for
each 150 linear meter of forest. Within the cacao farm we used 15 circular plots with a
radius of 11 m (0.038 ha) randomly placed using the ‘‘random point generator v.1.24’’
function available from (www.esri.com). Vegetation in the pasture was sampled in five