Alejandro Casas

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• Dr.
• Researcher at National Autonomous University of Mexico

El mapache norteño (Procyon lotor) tiene una dieta amplia que incluye materia vegetal, invertebrados, pequeños vertebrados y en ocasiones granos. Mediante cámaras trampa documentamos por primera vez la depredación de la iguana mexicana de cola espinosa (Ctenosaura pectinata) por el mapache norteño en un Área Natural Protegida urbana en el Occidente...

The Americas have a long history of managing fermentation to produce food and beverages. Because maize is such a widespread and culturally important food resource, it has historically been a basic substrate for fermentation by the cultures that inhabit these areas. Fermented maize beverages (FMB)are components of food systems, are present in ritual...

Mexico is home to a rich variety of fermented beverages made from both wild and domesticated plant species. Fermentation practices vary, with producers using either wild or inoculated techniques to obtain culturally valued final products. It is generally assumed that wild fermentations yield a greater diversity of volatile compounds compared to ino...

Background Mexico is one of the countries with the highest cultural, biological, and agrobiological diversity. However, an accelerated process of ancestral knowledge loss, related to the management of agrobiodiversity, native seeds, and other edible plant species management is affecting food sovereignty. This process of knowledge loss was documente...

Las especies de palmas en la república mexicana han desempeñado un papel significativo en el desarrollo de las comunidades rurales; poseen gran relevancia biológica, cultural y económica. El género Brahea es el de mayor uso en comunidades campesinas e indígenas del país. El objetivo de esta revisión fue exponer una síntesis de los estudios científi...

Background Mexico is one of the countries with the highest cultural, biological, and agrobiological diversity. However, an accelerated process of ancestral knowledge loss, related to the management of agrobiodiversity, native seeds, and other edible plant species management is affecting food sovereignty. This process of knowledge loss was documente...

The relationship between ecosystem disturbance and biodiversity levels has been a central focus of ecological research for the past half-century. The intermediate disturbance hypothesis, which suggests that maximum biodiversity is achieved through the coexistence of early and late successional species, however, has been challenged for its lack of c...

Participatory research is gaining popularity worldwide. However, there is a need of comprehensive metrics for assessing, monitoring, and guiding participatory research projects. In this study, we aimed to identify in the literature a set of multifaceted indicators that could be useful for evaluating participatory research projects in terms of susta...

Wild edible trees (WETs) play an important role in the diet of many rural communities. Therefore, research on their use and management is important to support both food sovereignty and local conservation of biocultural resources. We evaluated the different uses of WETs by the community of Zacualpan, Colima, in western Mexico, through 32 semi-struct...

Wild palms are among the most important plants in the Neotropics due to their wide distribution, species richness and cultural relevance for humans. In addition to their presence in forests, these plants also occur in anthropogenic systems throughout their range of distribution, but their role in these systems is often overlooked. We explored datab...

Background Ethnobiologists commonly analyze local knowledge systems related to plants, animals, fungi, and ecosystems. However, microbes (bacteria, yeasts, molds, viruses, and other organisms), often considered invisible in their interactions with humans, are often neglected. Microorganisms were the earliest life forms on Earth, and humans have int...

All over the world, humans incorporate into their context numerous species, more than 90% of them through gathering, hunting, or fishing. A smaller fraction, but that includes several thousands of species, are managed through silvicultural raising and cultivation techniques, and an even smaller fraction, estimated from 3000 to 7000 species, are und...

Collaborative, situated, and critical methodologies (CSCM) foster processes that provide dialogic and experiential working tools for emerging transdisciplinary agroecologies (TA). CSCM emphasize how local knowledge and practice (praxis) contribute to ensuring care for the common and the personal, safeguarding regenerative processes, actively protec...

Background: This study aimed to identify and characterize the knowledge and forms of use and management of Caryocar coriaceum Wittm. in rural communities in the region of the Sete Cidades National Park – PNSC (Piauí, Brazil). Methods: The data were collected through semi-structured interviews. The questionnaire sought information on knowledge of th...

Background Historically, the Andean people have experienced uncertainty in terms of the availability of food resources because of climatic and ecological variations that are typical of mountainous environments. Risk management strategies, including the diversified and complementary use and management of species and ecosystems at different elevation...

Guava (Psidium guajava L.) is a semi-domesticated fruit tree of moderate importance in the Neotropics, utilized for millennia due to its nutritional and medicinal benefits, but its origin of domestication remains unknown. In this study, we examine genetic diversity and population structure in 215 plants from 11 countries in Mesoamerica, the Andes,...

El pulque es una bebida fermentada elaborada con la savia de varias especies de magueyes (Agave spp.) Su producción y consumo se remonta a épocas prehispánicas, teniendo gran auge durante el siglo xix y hasta inicios del siglo xx, para después padecer un grave declive debido a un entramado de factores políticos, económicos y culturales. A pesar de...

Antecedentes: Los sistemas agroforestales tradicionales (SAF) son capaces de mantener la diversidad vegetal nativa mediante diferentes prácticas campesinas. Preguntas: ¿En qué medida los SAF mantienen la composición, diversidad y abundancia de plantas perennes? ¿Qué variaciones hay entre distintos tipos de vegetación? Especies de estudio: Plantas...

Background The commercialization of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) provides income for rural indigenous households. The integration of NTFPs into formal markets tends to intensify management practices to ensure production and monetary benefits. However, more research is needed to understand the motivations for managing of commercialized species...

Tropical dry forests (TDFs) are ecosystems of high biocultural value, in which agroforestry systems (AFSs) have been essential in their management and conservation. We aimed to characterize agroforestry practices and analyze their capacity to conserve perennial plant diversity. In addition, we sought to evaluate how the management of TDFs as AFSs,...

Los puestos a pie de carretera son una estrategia de venta directa de agricultores en el sureste mexicano, sin embargo, hasta la fecha, no se ha analizado su importancia en la comercialización de agrobiodiversidad y en la economía. En este estudio se caracterizaron y tipificaron los puestos en el sistema rural-urbano cercano a la ciudad de Villaher...

Ethnobiology analyzes the interactions between people and their surrounding environments from various perspectives. Some studies have been criticized by social scientists, who argue that ethnobiologists have insufficiently considered the conflicts between the dominant economic and political model and rural communities’ lives, which are often ideali...

Protected areas are of paramount relevance to conserving wildlife and ecosystem contributions to people. Yet, their conservation success is increasingly threatened by human activities including habitat loss, climate change, pollution, and species overexploitation. Thus, understanding the underlying and proximate drivers of anthropogenic threats is...

Resumen Las comunidades nahuas de la Montaña baja de Guerrero tienen un ciclo agrícola-ritual estrechamente relacionado con la estacionalidad, los procesos ambientales, la agricultura y el paisaje. Las celebraciones más importantes de la región son las que piden una buena temporada de lluvias, que termine la lluvia y agradecer por la cosecha. Parti...

RESUMEN: Las cocinas de los hogares son espacios donde manos y vidas se han dedicado a la transformación de ingredientes en comida. Los conocimientos que se expresan en las recetas y técnicas de cocina echan mano del fogón, sartenes, ollas e ingredientes para crear aromas, sabores y texturas que, además dealimentar vidas, influyen en acciones que m...

Los sistemas agroalimentarios locales se caracterizan por la diversidad de actores, prácticas y conocimientos, así como por las formas en que se configuran a partir de escalas y geografías, dando lugar a múltiples expresiones y escenarios de análisis, discusión y reivindicación. Al respecto, los principales aportes y propuestas se han centrado tant...

Trees of the Neotropical genus Crescentia produce hard-shelled fruits used to manufacture bowls. In this work we analyze the role played by these vessels in the material culture of Mesoamerican peoples through archaeological, ethnohistorical (including 19 works and three tribute lists) and linguistic evidence (including 40 native languages). The ea...

This work analyzes the safe consumption of wild mushrooms in Mexico, addresses the mushroom poisoning phenomenon, and discusses the role of communication and environmental education to prevent them. We documented that most mushroom poisonings happen in mestizo and transculturized indigenous communities. We constructed the online 'Digital repository...

Background Agri-silvicultures (ASC) are biocultural practices procuring either the maintenance of wild diversity in predominantly agricultural spaces or introducing agrobiodiversity into forests. In the Mesoamerican region, ASC contribute to food sovereignty and territorial conservation and provide strategies for dealing with global changes. Previo...

Background: In countries where the consumption of mushrooms is common, hundreds of mushroom poisonings occur every year, which represents a public health problem. In Mexico, mushroom poisoning is classified as a non-bacterial gastrointestinal poisoning, which prevents timely care. Objective: To create a free-access platform that synthesizes and...

The Nahua communities in the Central Highlands of Guerrero have a ritual-agricultural cycle closely related to seasonality, environmental processes, agriculture, and landscape. The most important celebrations in the region are those asking for a good rainy season, for the rain to end, and to thank for the harvest. Building upon the ethnoecological...

People's interests and needs, as well as biological characteristics of species, determine human perception and interaction with biodiversity. Thus, both cultural and biological factors should be considered to understand biocultural salient species. We studied the cultural and biological traits that influence bird salience for an indigenous communit...

Background: In countries where the consumption of mushrooms is common, hundreds of mushroom poisonings occur every year, which represents a public health problem. In Mexico, mushroom poisoning is classified as a non-bacterial gastrointestinal poisoning, which prevents timely care. Objective: To create a free-access platform that synthesizes and sta...

El concepto de sistemas socioecológicos es una importante herramienta teórica para analizar los problemas ambientales que se viven a escalas locales, regionales y globales, así como para diseñar acciones dirigidas a atenderlos. Hoy en día es difícil identificar y entender un sistema social disociado de sistemas naturales, de la misma manera que es...

Several Mesoamerican crops constitute wild‐to‐domesticated complexes generated by multiple initial domestication events, and continuous gene flow among crop populations and between these populations and their wild relatives. It has been suggested that the domestication of cotton (Gossypium hirsutum) started in the northwest of the Yucatán Peninsula...

Traditional fermented products are disappearing from the local foodscapes due to social pressures and ecological changes that affect their production; it is therefore crucial to document local knowledge, which is crucial to maintain and recover local biocultural heritage and to contribute to food security. This study aims to document and foster the...

This chapter reviews taxonomic, ethnobotanical and ecological aspects of the genus Stenocereus in Mexico. Use, management and domestication of the most relevant species are emphasized.

Peoples’ knowledge about their natural surroundings is tightly linked with practices to appropriate natural components, ecological processes, and ecosystems, and to their cosmovision. Peoples and their surroundings are mutually transformed through management practices and the influence of landscapes on peoples’ culture. A portion of the peoples’ kn...

América Latina posee una elevada riqueza biocultural que está amenazada por la expansión industrial y urbana. Los estudios de ecología urbana se han centrado en las grandes urbes y pocos han considerado analizar aspectos socioculturales. Aquí analizamos desde una aproximación etnoecológica la percepción sobre la riqueza de especies de aves que visi...

This chapter explores the taxonomy and ethnobotany of Agave species from diverse mountain regions of Mexico, and a complete list of the useful Agaves from Mexico

Antecedentes: El manejo humano de las plantas puede modificar los niveles y la distribución de su diversidad genética. Preguntas: ¿Cómo es la estructura filogeográfica de Crescentia alata y cómo se asocia con cambios climáticos? ¿Qué tan diversos genéticamente son los huertos y qué impacto tiene el manejo de los árboles sobre esta diversidad? Esp...

The Sierra Negra region is a rich mosaic of ecosystems and cultures in interaction. There, people practice a pattern of multiple use and management of the different plant species and vegetation types occurring in their communitarian territories and, through interchange, those of other communities of the region. Due to a complex socio-ecological his...

Archaeological studies have revealed that humans have inhabited the territory that today is Mexico for more than 20,000 years, while ethnobotanical research has identified that these peoples have made use of more than 7,000 plant species, according to current information. More than 2,000 species are edible plants, that were and are included in thei...

Ethnobotany is an integrative, multidimensional research field, whose main purpose is understanding interactions and relationships between humans and plants, and their cultural, ecological, and evolutionary consequences throughout history. This pur�pose is linked with the general interest of science for analyzing interactions between human societie...

Genus Stenocereus (Cactaceae) is formed by about 23 species, most of them under different type and intensity of management, including forms of silvicultural management and cultivation. Some management types involve domestication processes; previous studies have demonstrated that management determines significant effect increasing frequency of pheno...

De acuerdo con la Organización de las Naciones Unidas para la Agricultura y la Alimentación (FAO) este sector engloba a más del 90 % de las fincas en todo el mundo, y produce el 80 % de los alimentos consumidos globalmente. Es importante señalar que son las mujeres rurales, campesinas, indígenas, de pueblos originarios y afrodescendientes, defensor...

Wild edible mushrooms are non-timber forest products highly valued as food supplements and a source of income for rural communities. The objective is to quantify the use and knowledge of wild edible mushrooms across forest socio-ecosystems of central México. We conducted 40 household structured surveys in five Mestizo communities in the state of Mi...

Plant reproductive biology encompasses the study of sexual and asexual reproduction, as well as morphological, physiological, ecological, and genetic aspects influencing these processes. Management can influence reproduction of plants and associated attributes. For economically and culturally important species, it is known that exudates affect biom...

El Jardín Etnobiológico La Campana, Colima, tiene por objetivo ser un espacio de conservación y comunicación de información sobre la biodiversidad regional y el conocimiento y manejo de esta. La conservación de agrobiodiversidad es uno de los ejes principales del proyecto, y se ha generado y sistematizado información sobre las especies que la compo...

This chapter introduces the whole book. It is dedicated to analyze interactions between peoples and plants in the mountain regions of an eminently mountainous country: Mexico. Most of the Mexican territory are mountains that for thousands of years have harbored an extraordinarily high diversity of plants, human cultures , and ecosystems. Richness o...

We conducted this study as part of a participatory work that started from an initiative of the Rarámuri community of Cuiteco in connection with CONTEC A.C. (a local NGO). In the early twenty-first century, people from Cuiteco decided to stop exploiting timber from their forests, an activity that generated negative ecological and socio-economic impa...

Pulque is a fermented beverage prepared with the sap of agave species, consumed since pre-Hispanic times in Mexico. In the sixteenth century, spaces called pulquerías were established for the sale and consumption of pulque. The demand for pulque became so high that there were more than 1500 pulquerías in Mexico City early twentieth century, but due...

This study aims to analyze the relationships between culture and nature associated with food sovereignty of the P'urhépecha people of Michoacán, central Mexico. We explore how food sovereignty could be analyzed by decentering humans. Firstly, we examine the context and meaning of food sovereignty based on information on the P'urhépecha culture, its...

Management is commonly directed to decrease risk and increase certainty in resources availability. Risk in access to resources may be influenced not only by ecological factors, but also by human pressures which may be higher with the cultural and economic values of resources. People manage plants and fungi according to their role in subsistence, am...

This chapter shows a general panorama of ethnobotanical research and information generated during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries among Mexican cultures, according to the database Base de Datos Etnobotánicos de Plantas Mexicanas (BADEPLAM) of the Botanical Garden at the Institute of Biology, UNAM. This is the most complete database with et...

Esta infografía fue elaborada a partir de los resultados del proyecto de investigación: "Paisajes alimentarios: una aproximacion socio-ecologica del uso alimentario de paisajes bioculturales por aves y pueblos originarios". IIES-UNAM

This work examines the development of ethnobotany, focusing on Mexico in this millennium. How has the discipline grown? What is the relative importance of Spanish? Are there inflection points? How did some select areas develop, and why? Numerical growth was analyzed mainly through Google Scholar queries. Other subjects were treated based on literat...

Indigenous management of biocultural resources can influence behavior of non-target animals. Hence, identifying shared resources between indigenous communities and fauna is essential to understand the ecological relationships that occur within cultural landscapes and promote sustainable practices. In this ethnoecological research we analyzed the fe...

Public inclusion in scientific endeavors has spread worldwide. Although participatory research has not been oblivious in Latin America, studies are better known from specific countries and the social sciences. We used an academic search engine for compiling the digital literature regarding public participation in biodiversity research (PPBR) perfor...

Domestic activities, involving productive and reproductive spheres, are mainly performed by women, requiring a great amount of knowledge and skills that are poorly represented in the literature and often undervalued in the society. Women’s role in the food system was investigated in Lacanjá Chansayab, Mexico, a village inhabited by ~400 Lacandon Ma...

This study documents the Mazahua ecological knowledge of plants, their nomenclature and classification, and their role in subsistence of people in a village of the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, Mexico. We registered 213 useful plant species within the territory studied. Prunus serotina, Rubus liebmannii, and Crataegus mexicana were the main...

Synonyms Myrtillocactus cochal (Orcutt) Britton and Rose: Cereus cochal Orcutt; Cereus geometrizans var. cochal (Orcutt) K. Brandegee; Myrtillocactus geometrizans var. cochal (Orcutt) W.T. Marsha Myrtillocactus geometrizans (Mart. ex Pfeiff.) Console: Cereus geometrizans Mart. ex Pfeiff.; Cereus pugioniferus Lem.; Myrtillocactus pugionifer (Lem.) A...

An ethnoecological approach was conducted to identify the role of plants and animals in subsistence of the Cuicatec people. The study was carried out in the indigenous community of San Lorenzo Pápalo, Oaxaca, where we documented and analyzed local people’s knowledge about plants and animals and their local uses and management. This chapter focuses...

Las interacciones de los seres humanos con los ecosistemas y la biodiversidad hoy han alcanzado un impacto negativo dramático. El Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA, 2005) y estudios más recientes (Barnosky et al., 2012) han estimado que aproximadamente la mitad de la superficie de los ecosistemas terrestres ha sido transformada drásticamente por...

Melothria pendula L.: Apodanthera gracilis Benth.; Bryonia convolvulifolia Schltdl; Bryonia filiformis Roxb.; Bryonia guadalupensis Spreng.; Cucumis glaber Walter; Melothria crassifolia Small; Melothria costensis C. Jeffrey; Melothria donnell-smithii Cogn; Melothria donnell-smithii var. hirtella Cogn; Melothria donnell-smithii var. rotundifolia Cog...

La distribución conocida del Mosquero del Balsas (Xenotriccus mexicanus) se limita al occidente de México, desde el centro de Michoacán hasta el oeste del Istmo de Tehuantepec, abarcando un ámbito altitudinal que va desde los 900 hasta los 2000 msnm. Reportamos dos individuos de la especie en un área de selva baja caducifolia en la comunidad Nahua...