Kimberly Williams-Guillen

My main research interests involve the role of matrix habitats (the disturbed, human-managed areas that surround primary habitat) in biodiversity conservation in the Neotropics. I focus on mammalian diversity and its ecological function in agricultural systems in Central America. Since 2006 I have been working with a research group from the University of Michigan in Finca Irlanda, a shade coffee plantation in southern Mexico, where I have studied bat diversity and ecosystem function.  My research considers both the relationship between agricultural management intensity on bat assemblage structure, and the effects of bat predation on arthropod populations and levels of herbivory in agroecosystems.  My current research in Mexico focuses on the use of arboreal roosts by bats in shade coffee, and on the use of molecular methods to describe the diets of insectivorous bats in these agroforestry systems. These insectivorous bats hunt by snatching prey like katydids and caterpillars directly from leaves and the ground.  These “foliage-gleaning” bats are particularly sensitive to intensification in coffee plantations, and are not found in plantations with very low shade cover.  I received my Ph.D. in 2003 from New York University.  For my dissertation, I studied the ecology of mantled howler monkeys (Alouatta palliata) living in a shade coffee plantation in Mombacho Volcano, Nicaragua.  This research demonstrated that shade coffee plantations serve as core habitat for these forest-adapted mammals. From June 2003 to July 2004, I was a postdoctoral researcher for the Saint Louis Zoo, based in Bosawás Biosphere Reserve in northern Nicaragua.  I collaborated with indigenous Miskito and Mayangna residents in Bosawás to study the population status and subsistence hunting of large mammals and birds. I am a research scientist with Paso Pacífico, an NGO dedicated to conservation of Nicaragua’s remaining fragments of tropical dry forest. I am working with Paso Pacífico to develop long-term biodiversity monitoring and conservation programs for wildlife in the highly fragmented landscape of southwestern Nicaragua. 

Director of Conservation Science

Paso Pacifico, CA