Edith Villa-Galaviz

Understanding the niche turnover of ecological communities is fundamental for advancing successional theory and effective restoration. However, since niche preferences are known for a few taxa, ecosystem succession is only partially understood. To fill this gap, using a null model approach, we determined the niche optimal within eighteen ecological...

Litter decomposition by arthropods, microbes, and fungi is a key ecosystem process in tropical forests, yet its response to forest disturbance and recovery remains poorly understood. To investigate decomposition dynamics across forest succession, we conducted an experiment in the Ecuadorian lowland Chocó (Esmeraldas) using a chronosequence approach...

From hunting and foraging to clearing land for agriculture, humans modify forest biodiversity, landscapes, and climate. Forests constantly undergo disturbance–recovery dynamics, and understanding them is a major objective of ecologists and conservationists. Chronosequences are a useful tool for understanding global restoration efforts. They represe...

Global environmental change may lead to changes in community structure and in species interactions, ultimately changing ecosystem functioning. Focusing on spatial variation in fungus–plant interactions across the rapidly changing Arctic, we quantified variation in the identity of interaction partners. We then related interaction turnover to variati...

Tree diversity promotes predator abundance and diversity, but evidence linking these effects to increased predation pressure on herbivores remains limited. In addition, tree diversity effects on predators can vary temporally as a function of environmental variation, or due to contrasting responses by different predator types. In a multi-year study,...

A common practice used to restore and maintain biodiversity in grasslands is to stop or decrease the use of fertilizers as they are a major cause of biodiversity loss. This practice is problematic for farmers who need fertilizers to increase forage and meet the nutritional needs of livestock. Evidence is needed that helps identify optimal fertilize...

Despite the importance of insect pollination to produce marketable fruits, insect pollination management is limited by insufficient knowledge about key crop pollinator species. This lack of knowledge is due in part to (1) the extensive labour involved in collecting direct observations of pollen transport, (2) the variability of insect assemblages o...

Species contribute differently to the structure and stability of networks of interacting species. However, species contributions to the importance of other species is usually neglected, thus limiting our understanding of species dynamics beyond the general network structure. We combined knowledge on diversity effects on focal species and network ec...

Comparing ecological networks along environmental gradients can enable a better understanding of the environmental filtering and coexistence mechanisms that determine community assembly. In the present study, we assessed hummingbird-plant network metrics at three sites along an altitudinal gradient in the Sierra Madre Occidental corresponding to tr...

Realizar un diagnostico preliminar sobre el posible impacto de los regímenes del fuego en la estructura y composición de algunas comunidades arbóreas y micorrizas del Área de la Flora y Fauna "La Primavera" (APFFLP), Jalisco, México.

Grassland fertilisation drives non‐random plant loss resulting in areas dominated by perennial grass species. How these changes cascade through linked trophic levels, however, is not well understood. We studied how grassland fertilisation propagates change through the plant assemblage into the plant–flower‐visitor, plant–leaf miner and leaf miner–p...

Lobelia villaregalis is a plant endemic to Jalisco, Mexico. The habitat where it grows is not well known and for this reason, conservation strategies and the definition of potential distribution in other sites have not been defined. In this study, a description of soil characteristics and floristics are presented for a ravine and a rock face where...

Forest succession can influence herbivore communities through changes in host availability, plant quality, microclimate, canopy structure complexity and predator abundance. It is not well known, however, if such influence is constant across years. Caterpillars have been reported to be particularly susceptible to changes in plant community compositi...

Hurricanes are one of the major natural forces affecting plant and animal dynamics in areas where tropical dry forests (TDF) are located. Most studies of hurricane impacts have evaluated the effects on plants, but few have addressed how interactions between plants and animals are affected. We investigated the effect of hurricane Jova on plant-lepid...

Extensive land-use change in the tropics has produced a mosaic of successional forests within an agricultural and cattle-pasture matrix. Post-disturbance biodiversity assessments have found that regeneration speed depends upon propagule availability and the intensity and duration of disturbance. However, reestablishment of species interactions is s...

Incidence of Lepidopteran species in different successional stages of tropical dry forest in the Chamela region. Numbers indicate the number of plant species where that Lepidopteran species was found. 0 indicates absence. (DOCX)

Incidence of plant species in different successional stages of tropical dry forest in the Chamela region. Numbers indicate the number of Lepidopteran species found associated with that plant species. * indicates absence, 0 indicates that the plant is present in the successional stage but has no interaction with Lepidopterans. (DOCX)

Presentamos una síntesis del programa de investigación de largo plazo (iniciado en 2004) denominado Manejo de Bosques Tropicales (MABOTRO), llevado a cabo por académicos de once instituciones y más de 50 estudiantes de licenciatura y posgrado. Se construyó un marco metodológico para la generación de conocimientos que coadyuve a la preservación de s...