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Introduction
I am a full time researcher interested in the ecology and conservation of plan-vertebrate interactions, particularly those involving mammals.
Current institution
Additional affiliations
September 2017 - present
May 2013 - September 2017
Position
- Coordinator of the Master´s program on Integrative Ecology
January 2012 - present
Position
- Head Laboratory of Analysis for the Conservation of Biodiversity
Education
August 1997 - April 2005
August 1988 - October 1992
Publications
Publications (103)
Protected areas (PAs) are one of the main strategies to preserve tropical biodiversity. However, their viability is compromised by the impacts of a variety of threats. To gain a more integrated view of how different threats affect them, individually and in combination, we analyzed the spatial distribution of forest loss (2010–2015), human density,...
Studies of tropical mammal defaunation highlight the loss of species as well as their reduction in abundance and diversity; however, there is a complex series of effects associated with this anthropogenic disruption, including increases in the relative abundance of disturbance-tolerant mammals and the arrival of alien mammals whose effects on bioti...
Using camera traps, we documented that 21 bird and 9 mammal species use water‐filled tree holes (dendrotelmata) in the seasonal tropical forest of the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, in southern Mexico. These species visited dendrotelmata primarily for foraging and drinking. The overall use of dendrotelmata was equally frequent between dry and rainy se...
The magnitude of human impact on biodiversity makes producing information on the conservation status of wildlife an urgent matter. Despite the increasingly widespread use of camera trapping for mammal monitoring, there are no assessments on how this tool helps fill specific knowledge gaps. We reviewed studies published between 2000 and 2018 in Mexi...
Ecosystem functioning is influenced by biological diversity, ecological interactions, and abiotic conditions. Human interactions with ecosystems can cause major changes in how they function when involving changes in the vegetation cover and structure (i.e., land use change). This study examines how land use change affects the diversity of arbuscula...
Water availability strongly influences the ecology of terrestrial birds and mammals. It will likely play an increasing role as a limiting factor as climate change and human demand make water availability scarcer. However, we lack a knowledge synthesis describing our current understanding of the use of water sources, particularly for wildlife hydrat...
Various terms have been used to highlight the ecological and conservation importance of tapirs. Some of them are more research-oriented, while others focus more on raising awareness of the importance of tapir conservation. Despite their primary use, it is highly desirable to know the extent to which these terms are supported by scientific evidence....
The study of species association is of great interest in ecology due to its role in understanding key issues such as patterns of habitat use by animals, species coexistence, biotic interactions, and in general factors affecting community structure and assembly. There are many indices that ecologists commonly use, all based on the observed frequenci...
We quantified the amount of pollen carried by bats and birds visiting the flowers of cultivated and wild individuals of the endemic Agave cupreata in western Mexico and estimated the distance to which pollen was moved using diurnal/nocturnal inflorescence exclusions and fluorescent powders. There were no differences in the amount of pollen transpor...
Rodents are important hosts for ectoparasites, such as fleas, ticks, and mites, which means they are also important intermediate hosts for many zoonotic diseases. As anthropogenic environments bring humans and rodents into closer contact, an understanding of host–ectoparasite ecology is essential to predict and manage disease spillover risks. We ai...
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...
Water availability significantly influences bird and mammal ecology in terrestrial ecosystems. However, our understanding of the role of water as a limiting resource for birds and mammals remains partial because most of the studies have focused on surface water bodies in desert and semi-desert ecosystems. This study assessed the use of two types of...
The consumption of fruits and seeds by mammals can have a strong impact on the regeneration of tropical forests. Our knowledge of this biotic interaction has steadily increased recently but it remains fragmentary. This is largely due to most of the studies focusing on a small proportion of the diverse mammals and plants involved in these interactio...
Several features in the fruit of some neotropical trees likely evolved in response to the interaction with the mammalian megafauna extinct in the late Pleistocene. However, few studies have assessed the interactions between these plants and mammals in the absence of megafauna. We conducted a camera-trapping study in the Reserve of El Triunfo, Chiap...
Introduction:
Tropical forests provide important ecosystem services, including disease control. However, few studies have focused on how deforestation affects species more suitable to be zoonotic vectors.
Objective:
To evaluate how deforestation affects the abundance and species richness of rodents and their associated ectoparasites in a tropical...
The grison is a carnivorous mammal of the family Mustelidae listed as threatened in México. There are few records and information on different aspects of its ecology. The objective of this note was to report new records of grison in Campeche. From January 2017 to June 2022, 30 camera-trap stations were installed in natural and artificial water bodi...
Protected areas (PAs) are essential for biodiversity conservation, but their restrictive policies could accentuate poverty. Such a possibility may occur with the more restrictive PAs (e.g., national parks), which prioritize conservation while limiting the use of natural resources. However, less restrictive PAs, such as biosphere reserves, which all...
Habitat loss due to land use change is recognized as one of the major drivers of contemporary defaunation. In this chapter, we examine tropical land mammal defaunation in Mexico from the perspective of changes in the natural land cover that represents the distribution range of a large sample (N = 252) of mammalian species. Based on a co-inertia ana...
Landscape connectivity between protected natural areas and their surroundings is essential to maintain wildlife movement and to promote gene flow and genetic diversity. The grayish opossum mouse (Tlacuatzin canescens) was used for modeling functional landscape connectivity between the Chamela-Cuixmala Biosphere Reserve, an important biological rese...
Deforestation of old-growth forests (OGF) is a significant driver of biodiversity loss, particularly impacting rare species. However, the threat to dominant species is usually overlooked, given their relatively high abundance. Therefore, assessing the impact of forest loss on dominant species is imperative, mainly because they play critical roles i...
Protected areas can prevent forest loss, but their effects on forest fragmentation and forest regrowth are poorly understood. Furthermore, the importance of protected areas in shaping these forest spatial changes may depend on different socioeconomic drivers (e.g. population size, distance to cities, proportion of local people working in non-farm o...
Great attention has been drawn to the impacts of habitat deforestation and fragmentation on wildlife species richness. In contrast, much less attention has been paid to assessing the impacts of chronic anthropogenic disturbance on wildlife species composition and behaviour. We focused on natural small rock pools (sartenejas), which concentrate vert...
The pine-oak forests of Mexico are reservoirs of high biological diversity, largely due to their high richness of vascular flora. However, mosses have received little attention. We studied the floristic composition, diversity, and species richness of the moss community in the pine-oak forests of the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca, Mexico. A comprehensive l...
La alteración antrópica modifica el tipo de mamíferos que consumen frutos de Attalea butyracea en una selva neotropical y la intensidad con que lo hacen
La pérdida del hábitat y la caza son dos de las principales causas de la disminución de mamíferos, que no solo afecta a la presencia de especies, sino también a sus funciones ecológicas. La frugivo...
The study of species association is of great interest in ecology due to its role in understanding key issues such as patterns of habitat use by animals and biotic interactions. There is a large number of indices that ecologists commonly use, all based on the observed frequencies of organism occurrences, to evaluate the association between a pair of...
Forestry harvesting represents an important economic activity around the world. Habitat degradation due to forest harvesting contributes to biodiversity loss; therefore, it is necessary to implement logging management aimed at reducing its impact. Forest management by reduce-impact logging (RIL) involves cutting trees following regulations focused...
Geoffroy's spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi) satisfy their need for water mainly from food items and arboreal water sources, but climate change and other anthropogenic impacts can drive a more frequent use of ground water by this arboreal species. Here, we report 25 events of use of natural and artificial terrestrial water bodies by spider monkeys...
This paper introduces a graphical user interface (GUI) for the R software that allows calculating the rainfall-runoff relationship, using the Curve Number method. This GUI is a raster-tool whose outputs are runoff estimates calculated using land use/land cover and hydrologic soil group maps. The package allows the user to select among three differe...
Signal divergence and sensory preferences may lead to sexual isolation and eventually promote speciation between animal populations. However, few studies have quantified the degree of chemical signal divergence and scent-mediated sexual isolation in lizard populations. Geographic and ecological variations among populations of the whiptail lizard As...
Junto con los caballos, asnos, cebras y rinocerontes, los tapires conforman el orden Perissodactyla, tristemente notorio porque una gran proporción de sus especies está en grave riesgo de desaparecer a consecuencia del impacto humano. El tapir centroamericano (Tapirus bairdii), única especie de este grupo que es nativa de México, se encuentra catal...
We report, for the first time, visitation to the inflorescences of the endemic Agave cupreata by 2 marsupial species, Didelphis virginiana and Tlacuatzin canescens, in the state of Michoacán, western Mexico. These 2 species were recorded drinking the nectar of A. cupreata and transporting large amounts of pollen among the flowers. This agave is res...
Las poblaciones del tapir centroamericano (Tapirus bairdii), como las de otras especies de mamíferos silvestres de talla grande, están sujetas a una fuerte amenaza a consecuencia de la cacería y el deterioro de su hábitat. Bajo estas circunstancias resulta crucial contar con la capacidad de generar de manera rápida y efectiva estimaciones de paráme...
La percepción de los servicios y di-servicios ecosistémicos por parte de las personas es información clave para la formulación de iniciativas de educación y políticas públicas en favor de la conservación de la biodiversidad. En este trabajo describimos los servicios y di- servicios que otorgan los animales y que fueron reconocidos por las personas...
Within a community, body mass variation among frugivore species is associated with: a) animal's ecological, physiological and functional traits; b) community-level biogeographic/climatic variables; c) anthropogenic factors, and methodological approaches. Furthermore, frugivore-plant relationships are highly context dependent ; thus, variation in sp...
LAS SARTENEJAS DE CALAKMUL. A pesar de ubicarse en el trópico y de contar con una impresionante vegetación, la región de Calakmul dispone de poca agua accesible para la fauna silvestre. Las acumulaciones estacionales de agua de lluvia desempeñan un papel crítico para satisfacer las necesidades que aves y mamíferos tienen de este preciado líquido. D...
In this chapter we examine how the current patterns of anthropogenic impact on biodiversity are engendering a pulse of animal life loss – defaunation – with emphasis on the decline and massive extinction of populations of mammals. Given that many species of this group operate as herbivores and, due to their local abundance in some regions and ecosy...
Importance of the conservation of Baird´s tapir from an evolutionary perspective
Camera-trapping related tools to study Bairds tapir
El proceso de defaunación, causado por actividades humanas tales como la cacería y la deforestación, involucra la desaparición de especies animales de sus hábitats naturales, así como de las funciones ecológicas que realizan. La defaunación es una de
las principales amenazas globales sobre la biodiversidad. La aplicación de métodos de análisis a ni...
Los ríos urbanos son hábitats que fungen como conectores y reservorios de biodiversidad en las ciudades. Sin embargo, se desconoce la importancia relativa de éstos para la fauna en comparación con otros hábitats. Utilizando a los murciélagos insectívoros como modelo biológico nos planteamos las siguientes preguntas, ¿Son los ríos más usados por los...
Análisis espacial y temporal de la estructura de la comunidad de mamíferos medianos y grandes de la Reserva de la Biosfera Selva El Ocote, en el sureste mexicano Spatial and temporal analysis of the structure of the community of medium and large body sized mammals in the Biosphere Reserve El Ocote, southern Mexico Resumen Las áreas naturales proteg...
La fauna silvestre provee de una gran diversidad de servicios ecosistémicos (se) en ambientes agropecuarios. Dentro de los más conocidos se encuentran la polinización, el control de plagas y la introducción de nutrientes al suelo. Sin embargo, existen otros menos conocidos, como la provisión de carne silvestre y aves ornamentales. En este capítulo...
Fruits reaching the floor of tropical forests constitute an attractive resource for a variety of mammals. Study of the characteristics of the frugivory interaction can help to advance in the understanding of the mechanisms favoring animal’s coexistence. However, there are few studies focused on analyzing patterns of activity of mammals feeding on f...
Los ríos urbanos son hábitats que fungen como conectores y reservorios de biodiversidad en las ciudades. Sin embargo, se desconoce la importancia relativa de éstos para la fauna en comparación con otros hábitats. Utilizando a los murciélagos insectívoros como modelo
biológico nos planteamos las siguientes preguntas, ¿Son los ríos más usados por los...
The reduced-impact logging system aims to minimally affect biodiversity. However, its effects on medium and large mammals’ populations have been scarcely explored. In the Sierra Juárez of Oaxaca, which has a high diversity of medium and large mammals, this management system has been implemented, which allows evaluating the impacts of this forest ma...
Extensive, unprotected tracts of tropical forests remain in community territories of the Calakmul region, in the Yucatan
Peninsula of Mexico. These forest tracts face deforestation mainly due to agricultural development. Based on the graphic
theory and using the CONEFOR SENSINODE 2.2 program, we analyzed the landscape connectivity between the fores...
En este libro recopilamos descripciones de las características y relevancia de algunas de las colecciones científicas más importantes albergadas en la Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo.
In this book we compile descriptions of the characteristics and relevance of some of the most important scientific collection habored in the Univer...
The study of the interaction among species is an active area of research in Ecology. In particular, it is of interest to evaluate the overlap of their ecological niches. Temporal activity is one of the niche’s axes most commonly used to explore ecological segregation among animal species, and many contributions focus on the overlap of this variable...
Road construction produce abrupt changes in landscape topography, microclimate, vegetation cover and levels of traffic noise. Moreover, road networks negatively affect vertebrate abundance, population gene flow, animal behavior and individual survival. Between July 2010 and January 2011, we conducted 10 surveys of animals killed on a road in Michoa...
A revision about the methods to evaluate the ecosystem services in agricultural environments.
La región de Uxpanapa, en el sur de Veracruz, es uno de los principales centros de diversidad vegetal de México, pero las actividades humanas han ocasionado la desaparición de cerca del 80% de la vegetación original. Actualmente, las plantaciones de cítricos son un componente evidente del paisaje de la zona. Sin embargo, debido a su baja rentabilid...
The ocelot is one of the most studied felid species in the neotropics yet most of our current knowledge comes from tropical rain forests and protected areas. Therefore, we lack a comprehensive understanding on how the species abundance varies in terms of ecological parameters across its full distribution range. This is particularly true for the spe...
Disminuir la acelerada pérdida de la biodiversidad y lograr al mismo tiempo satisfacer la creciente demanda de alimento, es uno de los principales desafíos actuales de la humanidad. A diferencia de otros efectos de la degradación y transformación de los hábitats, la pérdida de la biodiversidad es particularmente grave, ya que tiene un carácter irre...
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecy.2078/epdf
Artículo de divulgación científica en donde se utiliza a la planta Agave cupreata y la fauna de animales silvestres que visitan sus flores como un ejemplo de los servicios que proporciona la biodiversidad a los humanos.
En los últimos años ha crecido la preocupación por la drástica pérdida de poblaciones de la fauna nativa de mamíferos silvestres, que afecta especialmente a países tropicales como Mé- xico. Esta pérdida tiene una serie de repercusiones que rebasan la reducción de la diversidad alfa de las comunidades de este grupo. Entre estas repercusiones está la...
Se reporta, por primera vez, la presencia del murciélago insectívoro filostómido Macrotus waterhousii Gray, 1843 (Phyllostomidae) en la ciudad de Morelia, México. Éste fue colectado en el parque zoológico de la ciudad. Con este registro se eleva a 16 el número de especies de murciélagos reportados para la ciudad de Morelia.
Quantifying biodiversity patterns in the context of human caused environmental degradation is a fundamental task to improve conservation strategies; yet, it can be difficult given the rapid increase of available analytical methods. To guide studies on the topic, in this brief essay we present four approaches, accompanied by empirical examples, that...
Aim
We test a new species distribution modelling ( SDM ) framework, while comparing results to more common distribution modelling techniques. This framework allows for the combination of presence‐only ( PO ) and presence‐absence ( PA ) data and accounts for imperfect detection and spatial bias in presence data. The new framework tested here is base...
Background: Human impact over natural ecosystems located in Southern Mexico is increasingly evident. We generated a spatially explicit land use and cover change (LUCC) model to assess current and potential impact of human activities and to identify the influence of variables such as: distance to paved and unpaved roads, human settlements, rivers, s...
The Baird’s tapir (Tapirus bairdii) is the largest terrestrial mammal dwelling in the neotropics and the only native representative of the order Perissodactyla. This species is under a great threat due to the impacts of hunting and habitat loss. Therefore, implementation of conservation strategies, in situ and ex situ, is urgent. However, to improv...
The Baird's tapir (Tapirus bairdii) is the largest terrestrial mammal dwelling in the neotropics and the only native representative of the order Perissodactyla. This species is under a great threat due to the impacts of hunting and habitat loss. Therefore, implementation of conservation strategies, in situ and ex situ, is urgent. However, to improv...
La conversión de los hábitats naturales en monocultivos es un fenómeno que se presenta cada vez con mayor frecuencia, por lo que es necesario el estudio de su impacto sobre la diversidad, por ejemplo, de la herpetofauna. En el presente estudio se realizó un muestreo intensivo de anfibios y reptiles en 3 sitios en huertas de aguacate, 3 en bosque de...
Wild felids are one of the most vulnerable species due to habitat loss caused by fragmentation of ecosystems. We analyzed the effect of a structural corridor, defined as a strip of vegetation connecting two habitat patches, on the richness and habitat occupancy of felids on three sites in Marqués de Comillas, Chiapas, one with two isolated forest p...
Distribution patterns of wild felids (Carnivora: Felidae) in the dry tropics of Central-Western Mexico. The Michoacán state is characterized by the existence of important environmental heterogeneity in terms of climate, topography and types of vegetation, which includes the worldwide endangered tropical dry forest. Some reports indicating the prese...
The Michoacan state is characterized by the existence of important environmental heterogeneity in terms of climate, topography and types of vegetation, which includes the worldwide endangered tropical dry forest. Some reports indicating the presence of the six species of felids occurring in Mexico in this region have been made; however, evidence to...
I dentifying species distributions is fundamental to understanding their ecology and guiding conservation and management strategies. We compiled 756 unique range-wide Baird's tapir (Tapirus bairdii) detections via camera trapping of track/sign surveys in eight countries. We then estimated the distribution of suitable tapir habitat within a Maxent-m...
Secondary forests are replacing mature primary forests in the tropics because of increasing demand for agricultural land to support the growing human population. It is important to determine the potential of these secondary forests to support old-growth forest species, particularly threatened animal groups such as reptiles and amphibians. Moreover,...
It has been suggested that tropical defaunation may unleash communitywide
cascading effects, leading to reductions in plant diversity. However,
experimental evidence establishing cause–effect relationships thereof is
poor. Through a 5 year exclosure experiment, we tested the hypothesis that
mammalian defaunation affects tree seedling/sapling commun...
Baird's tapir (Tapirus bairdii) is one of the most emblematic mammalian species from Mesoamerica. Due to its level of evolutionary distinctiveness and anthropogenic threat this species was recently ranked in 34th position, in terms of its urgency for conservation, among more than 4, 000 species of mammals assessed by experts from the Zoological Soc...
Baird's tapir (Tapirus bairdii) is one of the most emblematic mammals of Mesoamerica, but like other large-bodied animals, it is facing an increasing risk of extinction due primarily to habitat loss. Mexico's 'ortion of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor (MBC-M) is located in one of the main strongholds for Bairds tapir. To assess the MBC-M's eff...
2 Uno de los problemas más interesantes, pero a la vez más desafiantes, de la conservación biológica es ha-cer compatibles las acciones que generan desarrollo económico con las acciones enfocadas en la preser-vación de los ecosistemas naturales y las especies que los habitan. Un ejemplo claro de esta situación se observa en el caso del desarrollo d...
Los tapires (Tapirus spp.) son mamíferos que tienen una ecología e historia evolutiva fascinante. con un peso que puede rebasar los 250 kg, los tapires son animales imponentes; sin embargo, en su medio na-tivo (selvas, humedales, bosque de montaña, pára-mos), son inofensivos y se alimentan exclusivamente de tallos, follaje, frutos, semillas y corte...
We present a novel method to improve individual identification of animals based on camera-trapping data. The method combines computer tools and human visual recognition to help multiple users to reach identification agreement. Application of this method to a bobcat (Lynx rufus) picture database from the Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve resulted in...
RESUMEN Para evaluar el potencial que el impacto humano tiene para modificar la configuración del paisaje en la porción mexicana del Corredor Biológico Mesoamericano (CBM-MX) elaboramos modelos espacialmente explícitos de cambio de la cobertura y uso del suelo (CCUS), utilizando el programa Dinamica EGO. Para la modelación utilizamos la cartografía...
Los bosques tropicales o selvas son reconocidos por poseer una diversidad de especies mayor de la que se puede encontrar en cualquier otro ecosistema terrestre (Connell, 1978; Gentry, 1988). Dentro de esta gran biodiversidad destaca, por involucrar especies muy carismáticas, la fauna de mamíferos. Como resultado de procesos evolutivos que han molde...
Tolerance, the capacity of plants to withstand attack by animals, as opposed to resistance, has been poorly examined in the context of seed predation. We investigated the role that the seed mass of the large-seeded endemic tree Aesculus californica plays as a tolerance trait to rodent attack by comparing, under greenhouse conditions, patterns of ge...
Elsevier, and the attached copy is provided by Elsevier for the author's benefit and for the benefit of the author's institution, for non-commercial research and educational use including without limitation use in instruction at your institution, sending it to specific colleagues who you know, and providing a copy to your institution's administrato...
It has been suggested that the anthropogenically driven loss of herbivorous mammals might lead to changes in the recruitment patterns of tropical rain forest plants, but few studies have examined the explicit mechanisms that might account for this effect. Here we propose a conceptual model linking differential mammalian defaunation and differential...
Hunting and habitat loss represent an increasingly common anthropogenic impact. Available evidence suggests that defaunation is typically differential: medium/large mammals are most affected while small rodents are less affected, or even favored. In heavily impacted areas, such as Los Tuxtlas, the residual mammalian fauna is dominated by small rode...
Habitat loss is a critical threat to tropical biodiversity and its quantification constitutes a central conservation issue. Typically, assessments have been based on deforestation rates statistics. However, this overlooks the effects brought about by the spatial reconfiguration of the remaining habitat: fragmentation. We present an analysis of frag...
Questions
Questions (2)
Hello!! I was invited to write a chapter about tapirs and one topic they want me to address is their role as “landscape architects”. I have already located a paper where tapirs are considered landscape architects, but the authors do not provide the corresponding definition. I am conducting a literature search but if anybody has some advice regarding a paper where such a concept is defined it would be greatly appreciated!! Thanks!!
I am trying to set this program in my computer to run some analyses on road kills but I am having several problems and the tutorial is not very helpful.
