Ernesto Ruelas Inzunza

University of Veracruz | UV · Instituto de Biotecnología y Ecología Aplicada (INBIOTECA)

Urbanization has profound effects on wildlife. Although some species benefit or even thrive in urban environments, most species respond differently to the varying degrees of disturbance that can be found across an urbanized landscape. Quantifying the effects of urbanization in wildlife distributions, however, is complicated: species vary in their p...

Efforts to decolonize science aim to change the asymmetries between the Global North and South by diversifying production and access to knowledge. However, costs and benefits of the struggle against colonial practices vary depending on the career stage of researchers. Early career researchers face pressures to conform to colonial norms for job secu...

Urbanization involves changes in landscape terrain, hydrology, and vegetation. These changes allow some wildlife species to thrive in cities while inhibiting others. We analyzed how an urbanization gradient (i.e., percentage of impervious surface) in Xalapa, Mexico, affects raptors habitat associations and at what percentage of impervious surface t...

Migratory raptors can fuel their journeys by feeding along the way. To maximize migration success, raptors are suspected to time their movements with the availability of their prey. Feeding rates can vary among species depending on migration distance (long vs. short distance), flight strategies (flapping vs. soaring), and within species according t...

Nurse plants provide benefits during the early life cycle of the protected plant by reducing the intensity of stressful abiotic conditions. However, nurse plants may influence frugivore visitation and consumption, affecting the initial benefits of this interaction and generating different frugivory patterns during the reproductive phase of the prot...

Seabirds have thrived over time in marine environments with highly variable productivity. Life history strategies favored by natural selection consist of late sexual maturation, few offspring per breeding event, high adult survival, long lifespan, and deferred breeding when food availability is low. Heermann’s gull Larus heermanni , with 95% of its...

The Hook-billed Kite (Chondrohierax uncinatus) is a specialized and secretive Neotropical raptor that has received little research attention. Despite scattered records of Hook-billed Kite movements, this species was long thought to be non-migratory. We studied the southbound autumn migration of Hook-billed Kites in Veracruz, Mexico, and Belize and...

A major barrier to advancing ornithology is the systemic exclusion of professionals from the Global South. A recent special feature, Advances in Neotropical Ornithology, and a shortfalls analysis therein, unintentionally followed a long-standing pattern of highlighting individuals, knowledge, and views from the Global North, while largely omitting...

Global-scope scientific journals have played an important role in upholding a colonial legacy of north-south inequities in ornithology, and they now have a key role to play in increasing equity in scientific publishing. We explore common barriers faced by ornithologists in the Neotropics (Latin America and the Caribbean) and suggest priority action...

A major barrier to advancing ornithology is the systemic exclusion of professionals from the Global South. A recent special dossier, Advances in Neotropical Ornithology, and a shortfalls analysis therein, unintentionally followed a long-standing pattern of highlighting individuals, knowledge, and views from the Global North, while largely omitting...

Frugivory interactions between birds and fruit-bearing plants are shaped by the abundance of its interacting species, their temporal overlap, the matching of their morphologies, as well as fruit and seed characteristics. Our study evaluates the role of seven factors of fruits and plants in determining the frequency of whole-fruit consumption by bir...

Urbanization involves changes in landscape terrain, hydrology, and vegetation. These changes allow some wildlife species to thrive in cities while blocking others. We analyzed how a gradient of urbanization in the city of Xalapa could have a filtering effect that prevents some raptors from occurring or effectively use the most urbanized areas, and...

I briefly review the use of the passive and active voices in scientific writing and formulate an argument in favor of the active voice’s use. I provide fictitious examples of each narrative type and make a side-by-side comparison. Each style has advantages and disadvantages. Papers written in the active voice are concise and clear, although they ar...

en Bird banding has allowed us to understand diverse aspects of the life histories of migratory raptors. However, most banding stations are located at northern latitudes so what we know about the movements of these raptors is biased toward higher latitudes, primarily from Canada and the United States, leaving important gaps in our knowledge of thei...

Frugivory networks exhibit a set of properties characterized by a number of network theory‐derived metrics. Their structures often form deterministic patterns that can be explained by the functional roles of interacting species. Although we know lots about how these networks are organized when ecosystems are in a complete, functional condition, we...

In frugivory networks, birds offer plants the advantage of dispersing their seeds away from the parent plants in exchange for macronutrients, primarily sugars, and water. The benefits for birds are clear, as they obtain food and water from fruits, and highly variable for plants, as birds may act in ways that vary from effective dispersers to seed p...

In the frugivory networks of many arid and semi-arid Mesoamerican ecosystems, columnar cacti act as keystone species that produce fruits with a high content of water and nutrients attractive to numerous vertebrates. The aim of this investigation was to assess the fruit removal patterns of two guilds of frugivores on the fruits of the woolly torch P...

Mexico has increased its efforts to recover forests in recent decades. Our paper addresses the problem of a net fall in the production of trees in official nurseries and the decline in the overall diversity of tree species produced to supply official federal programs. These reductions contrast with increases in the annual expenditures devoted to th...

We present a simple method to use birds to assess and track the restoration of Tropical Montane Cloud Forests using birds as indicator species. The method is composed of three pieces: a classification of disturbance phases, the collection of species- and assembly-level bird data, and the matching of these two data sets to understand its relationshi...

Holl and Zahawi (2018) agree on a number of approaches that we describe in a local case study of tropical montane cloud forest restoration in Mexico. However, they contend our argument that most applied nucleation projects have taken place in tropical lowlands as a mistake. They also provide data on the per‐hectare cost of restoration projects in C...

Amazonian bird species often have patchy spatial distributions, and previous work has attributed this pattern to habitat specialization and dispersal limitation; however, we know comparatively little about the origins and maintenance of the isolated populations that constitute a patchy distribution. In this study, we ask whether patchy populations...

Tropical Montane Cloud Forests (TMCFs) are among the vegetation types facing the greatest threats, both globally and in Mexico. Ecological restoration of TMCFs is a priority in several tropical countries. In this paper, we propose that restoration of TMCFs based on applied nucleation methods should be accompanied by a set of additional mechanisms t...

Para entender la dinámica de la cobertura del suelo en el Parque Nacional Cofre de Perote, se hizo una comparación de las tasas de cambio de uso a dos escalas durante el periodo 1995-2004. A escala meso, se estudiaron estos patrones en toda la superficie del Parque Nacional Cofre de Perote, que es una de las 60 montañas prioritarias de México y tam...

The successful completion of a graduate program in biological sciences is an endeavor that entails a passion for science. It requires some essential ingredients, such as the ability to think independently, a deep understanding of your study system, focus on strategic priorities, and establishing collaborations. A graduate program is also filled wit...

The successful completion of a graduate program in biological sciences is an endeavor that entails a passion for science. It requires some essential ingredients, such as the ability to think independently, a deep understanding of your study system, focus on strategic priorities, and establishing collaborations. A graduate program is also filled wit...

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide an ambitious and comprehensive framework for addressing development needs on a global, regional, and national scale. In order for the SDG targets to be obtainable, diverse stakeholders need the technical, institutional, and organizational capacity to implement the wide variety of initi...

Investigación inicial donde se pretende observar las diferencias en contenido nutricionales, disponibilidad y rasgos físicos de plantas con frutos consumidos por aves, manejadas y no manejadas en un parque periurbano.

We present the first study of the spatial and temporal dynamics of raptors and large soaring birds from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Mexico. Using systematic migration counts from multiple localities in the southern states of Oaxaca and Chiapas, as well as observations of their flight trajectories during eight consecutive years (2007–2014), we descr...

To understand the dynamics of land cover at the Parque Nacional Cofre de Perote, the rates of change in land use were compared at two different scales during the period 1995-2004. At the meso scale, these patterns were studied throughout the entire Parque Nacional Cofre de Perote, which is one of the 60 priority mountains of Mexico, and an importan...

We describe seven instances of kleptoparasitism by the Inca dove (Columbina inca) on the red harvester ant (Pogonomyrmex barbatus) in eastern Mexico, the first documented case in the order Columbiformes and the first for ants of the genus Pogonomyrmex. Doves visited the periphery of the ants' nest entrance and fed on waste material expelled by ants...

Mercury (Hg) is a global contaminant of aquatic food chains. Aquatic birds, such as the osprey (Pandion haliaetus), with migratory populations breeding in Canada and the northern United States and wintering in the Central and South America, can be exposed to mercury on both the breeding and wintering ranges. We examined Hg levels in 14 fish taxa fr...

Los Cerros de Kampankis forman una cordillera larga y delgada que se extiende en sentido norte-sur muy cerca de los Andes y a lo largo de la frontera Amazonas-Loreto en el noroeste del Perú. Con una longitud aproximada de 180 km y apenas 10 km de ancho, estos cerros se levantan en un filo pronunciado que alcanza elevaciones superiores a los 1,400 m...

Los censos durante la migración han sido utilizados como una herramienta válida para determinar estatus poblacionales de aves rapaces. En Veracruz, México, éstos tienen la posibilidad de generar valiosa información sobre poblaciones a escala regional y continental, y de proveer cobertura para aquellas que no son estudiadas en otros sitios. Los obje...

Continental-scale bird population estimates are used as a decision-support tool in conservation plans. The calculation of these estimates includes the use of density values and survey data from one or multiple sources extrapolated to the geographic scale of interest. In this paper, we use migration count data from a migration monitoring project in...

We studied different ecological aspects of the avifauna of the Macuiltépetl Ecological Park in Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico, in order to determine the biological and conservation value of a small urban natural area. We found 242 species of birds of which nearly one-half are Neotropical migrants. We describe population- and community-level aspects, such...

The Avian Knowledge Network (AKN) is an international collaboration of academic, non- government, and government institutions with the goal of organizing observations of birds into an interoperable format to enhance access, data visualization and exploration, and scientifi c analyses. The AKN uses proven cyberinfrastructure and informatics techniqu...

We present a short history of hawkwatching and the use of migration counts to monitor raptor populations in North America. We argue the need to continue monitoring hawks during their migrations as a component of a comprehensive monitoring and conserva- tion program for North American landbirds. We also discuss some of the concepts, principles, and...

Migratory behavior can be an important factor in determining contaminant exposure in avian populations. Accumulation of organochlorine (OC) pesticides while birds are wintering in tropical regions has been cited often as the reason for high concentrations in migrant populations. To explore this issue, we satellite tracked 16 Ospreys (Pandion haliae...

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Missouri, Columbia, December 2005. Includes bibliographical references.

RESUMEN: Se realizo un diagnóstico y genero información en un período de tiempo corto sobre la fauna silvestre presente en la Reserva Privada de El Edén (920 ha), ubicada 25 km al NNE de Leona Vicario, Municipio de Lázaro Cárdenas, Quintana Roo, México. Se registraron un total de 311 especies, de las cuales 186 son invertebrados y 125 son vertebrad...

________________________________________ The conservation of declining intercontinental landbird and shorebird migrants is complicated by the migratory nature of these organisms. Although debate over the causes of declines in most species will no doubt con-tinue for some time, continued attention has focused largely on events associated with the br...

Millions of Nearctic-Neotropical landbirds move through the coastal forests of the Gulf of Mexico each spring and autumn as they migrate across and around the gulf. Migration routes in the gulf region are not static—they shift year to year and season to season according to prevailing wind patterns. Given the dynamic nature of migration routes, coas...

This chapter contains descriptions of 22 raptor-migration watchsites on which trend analyses described in this work were based. The descriptions are grouped geo- graphically. Fifteen of the sites are within protected areas. Eleven of the sites are on mountain ridges, two are on canyon rims, fi ve are in coastal plains, two are in river valleys, one...

Millions of raptors and other Neotropical migratory birds are constrained to a narrow geo- graphic corridor during migration through Veracruz, México. Over many years of work, a clearly identifi ed list of problems has defi ned the agenda of a long-term conservation plan for this glob- ally important migration stopover site. Threats to migrants inc...

The extent to which the Raptor Population Index (RPI) serves to monitor populations of North America's birds of prey will depend on those who choose to maintain and improve it. Much like the National Audubon Society's Christmas Bird Counts, and the U.S. Geological Survey's Breeding Bird Surveys, RPI depends on a cadre of expert volunteers to conduc...

We provide recommendations for the optimal operation of raptor-migration watchsites, with the goal of reducing and controlling for variation in counts from sources unre- lated to population change. Each site must ensure consistency in the seasonal coverage period, length of the daily count period, the number and skill of observers, and the location...

We estimated trends in autumn counts of migrating diurnal raptors collected at four watchsites around the Gulf of Mexico: Florida Keys Raptor Migration Project at Curry Hammock State Park in the Florida Keys (1999-2005); Smith Point Raptor Migration Project and Corpus Christi Raptor Migration Project, Texas (1997-2005); and Veracruz River of Raptor...

Open-ended ecological monitoring has been criticized for failing to address specifi c ques- tions regarding the biological objective of interest or the extrinsic variables that may be affecting it. To enhance the contribution of monitoring to conservation, programs must address three central questions: 1) why monitor?, 2) what (parameters) should b...

We assessed the conservation status of 20 species of North American birds of prey by examining historical and recent estimates of trends in counts of raptors at migration watchsites. We compared these trend estimates with trends in Breeding Bird Surveys (BBSs), Christmas Bird Counts (CBCs) (terms in italics are defi ned in the book's glossary), and...

Available information on the ecology of neotropical migrants during the winter season and especially dur- ing migration is far behind the existing knowledge of birds during the breeding season. This paper presents a stopover ecology case study. We document the occur- rence of species, outline the prevailing weather patterns during spring and fall m...

The state of Veracruz, along the gulf coast of México, is an important fl yway for Neotropical migrants. Many passerines and other land birds use remnants of native vegetation as stopover sites for shelter and refueling during their migration. We operate a long-term banding station in a coastal forest near the fi shing village of Playa Salinas, in...