Miguel Martinez-Ramos

Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México | UNAM · Institute of Ecosystem and Sustainability Research (Instituto de Investigaciones en Ecosistemas y Sustentabilida)

The core principle shared by most theories and models of succession is that plant-environment (PE) feedback dynamics drive a directional change in the plant community, following a major disturbance. The most commonly studied feedback loops are those in which the regrowth of the plant community causes changes to the biotic (e.g., dispersers) or abio...

Succession is a fundamental concept in ecology because it indicates how species populations, communities, and ecosystems change over time on new substrate or after a disturbance. A mechanistic understanding of succession is needed to predict how ecosystems will respond to land‐use change and to design effective ecosystem restoration strategies. Yet...

Plant species produce far more seedlings than those surviving to adulthood. It would seem reasonable to take advantage of that excess production, by relocating seedlings to desired restoration sites. There is, however, little information available on this issue. In the present study, we collected naturally regenerated seedlings of two native specie...

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...

Abandonment of agricultural lands promotes the global expansion of secondary forests, which are critical for preserving biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services. Such roles largely depend, however, on two essential successional attributes, trajectory and recovery rate, which are expected to depend on landscape-scale forest cover in non-lin...

In humid tropics, small and medium farming systems are important for producing food but also because they retain rainforest patches with high conservation value. Forest conservation and agricultural production strongly compete for land in Tropical Farming Systems (TFS). Finding solutions that synergize increasing conservation areas and agricultural...

Los bosques tropicales húmedos son los ecosistemas terrestres más diversos del planeta, pero también de los más amenazados debido a la alta deforestación por actividades humanas. Es urgente entender cómo las especies arbóreas que los habitan son afectadas ante la pérdida de su hábitat. La “hipótesis de umbrales de extinción local” propone que a med...

Vegetation is a key biosphere component to supporting biodiversity on Earth, and its maintenance and proper functioning are essential to guarantee the well-being of humankind. From a broad perspective, a fundamental goal of vegetation ecology is to understand the roles of abiotic and biotic factors that affect vegetation structure, distribution, di...

1. Landscape-level disturbances, such as forest loss, can profoundly alter the functional composition and diversity of biotic assemblages. In fact, the landscape-moderated functional trait selection (LMFTS) hypothesis states that landscape-level disturbances may act as environmental filters that select a set of species with disturbance-adapted attr...

Forests that regrow naturally on abandoned fields are important for restoring biodiversity and ecosystem services, but can they also preserve the distinct regional tree floras? Using the floristic composition of 1215 early successional forests (≤20 years) in 75 human-modified landscapes across the Neotropic realm, we identified 14 distinct floristi...

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...

Fire scar analysis is a fundamental tool for reconstructing fire regimes in conifer forests. However, little is known about fire scar properties in tropical montane conifers, where some assumptions limit dendroecological research. These include that fir species do not exhibit external fire scars and that pines without external fire scars have not e...

Forest regrowth is key to achieve restoration commitments, but a general lack of understanding when it occurs and how long secondary forests persist hampers effective upscaling. We quantified spatiotemporal forest dynamics in a recently colonized agricultural frontier in southern Mexico, and tested how temporal variation in climate, and cross-commu...

CONTEXT Small-scale cropping systems face enormous challenges in obtaining efficient, stable and predictable responses to grain yields due to their great biophysical, management and socioeconomic complexity. In Mesoamerica, traditional managements have incorporated modern agricultural practices; however, the efficacy of these tools on grain yield a...

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...

La ciencia de la ecología busca entender las causas que determinan la abundancia y distribución de los seres vivos. Durante las últimas cinco décadas se ha ido construyendo en México un acervo rico, diverso y creciente de conocimientos ecológicos que son fundamentales para aportar lineamientos y acciones para la conservación, restauración y aprovec...

Sustainability requires a combination of meaningful co-production of locally relevant solutions, synthesis of insights gained across regions, and increased cooperation between science, policy and practice. The Programme for Ecosystem Change and Society (PECS) has been coordinating Place-Based Social-Ecological Sustainability Research (PBSESR) acros...

Resilient secondary tropical forests? Although deforestation is rampant across the tropics, forest has a strong capacity to regrow on abandoned lands. These “secondary” forests may increasingly play important roles in biodiversity conservation, climate change mitigation, and landscape restoration. Poorter et al . analyzed the patterns of recovery i...

Significance Tropical forests disappear rapidly through deforestation but also have the potential to regrow naturally through a process called secondary succession. To advance successional theory, it is essential to understand how these secondary forests and their assembly vary across broad spatial scales. We do so by synthesizing continental-scale...

Eradication of herbivores, due to human disturbances, produces a demographic outburst of highly competitive prey species, which in turn reduces plant species diversity. This happens at Los Tuxtlas tropical rainforest, Mexico, where a population outburst of the understory palm Astrocaryum mexicanum is ostensibly excluding tree species, but how this...

Early pioneer species share life histories enabling them to colonize disturbed sites, but how much they differ demographically and how such differentiation determines pioneer species turnover during succession are still open questions. Here, we approached these issues by comparing the demography of dominant pioneer tree species during the secondary...

Aim Here we examine the functional profile of regional tree species pools across the latitudinal distribution of Neotropical moist forests, and test trait–climate relationships among local communities. We expected opportunistic strategies (acquisitive traits, small seeds) to be overrepresented in species pools further from the equator, but also in...

Light is a key resource for tree performance and hence, tree species partition spatial and temporal gradients in light availability. Although light distribution drives tree performance and species replacement during secondary forest succession, we yet lack understanding how light distribution changes with tropical forest development. This study aim...

1. Land-use change threatens biodiversity in tropical landscapes, but its impact on forest regeneration remains poorly known. In fact, the landscape-scale patterns driving the diversity of regenerating plants within forest fragments have been rarely explored, and we are uncertain whether such drivers vary across regions with different land-use chan...

In the tropics, human modified landscapes (HMLs) emerge as potential areas where important levels of biodiversity, ecosystem functions, and services can be conserved. Yet, it is unknown which landscape structures may enable this goal. We studied how tree diversity (SD), aboveground biomass (AGB) and aboveground carbon storage (ACS) change across a...

Abiotic and biotic filters may play differential roles in the plant community organization along forest succession in abandoned fields. However, little is known about how life stage-specific filters influence species replacement during succession. We approach this issue by analyzing changes in community attributes (abundance, species density, speci...

Secondary tropical forests offer critical ecosystem services such as regulation of climate, soil and water resources, which are frequently traded off against the provision of forest products for human use or repeated clearing for agriculture. While some evidence also suggests potential synergies between regulating and material contributions of rege...

To evaluate to what extent effects of environmental heterogeneity and geographic distance determine beta-diversity of woody communities within and among vegetation types at a basin spatial scale. The importance of two components of beta-diversity (nestedness and replacement) were also assessed. Location: Cuitzeo basin, central Mexico. The Cuitzeo b...

Phylogenetic analysis of plant communities is useful for inferring ecological mechanisms driving forest succession. However, such analysis has scarcely been undertaken in tropical dry environments, especially for the dynamics of demographic components (i.e., recruited, surviving and dead plants) affecting the successional process. Here, we combine...

The poster shows alternative far uses configurations by optimizing both, the economical profit from agriultural uses and the tropical forest patches inside the farm units.

Tropical forests are converted at an alarming rate for agricultural use and pastureland, but also regrow naturally through secondary succession. For successful forest restoration, it is essential to understand the mechanisms of secondary succession. These mechanisms may vary across forest types, but analyses across broad spatial scales are lacking....

Introduction Defoliation and light competition are ubiquitous stressors that can strongly limit plant performance. Tolerance to defoliation is often associated with compensatory growth, which could be positively or negatively related to plant growth. Genetic variation in growth, tolerance and compensation, in turn, plays an important role in the ev...

Allometric model. Details on methods of the construction of an allometric model for estimation of biomass per plant part of seedlings of 6 months of age. (DOCX)

Iterative growth model. Details on methods of the construction and adaptation of an iterative growth model for estimation of daily individual seedling NAR, flam and γ. (DOCX)

Context Landscape structure can affect seed dispersal, but the spatial scale at which such effect is maximized (scale of effect, SoE) is unknown. Objectives We assessed patterns and predictors of SoE on the seed rain in two Mexican regions: the relatively well-preserved Lacandona rainforest, and the more deforested Los Tuxtlas rainforest. We hypot...

1. Species recovery after forest disturbance is a highly studied topic in the tropics, but considerable debate remains on the role of secondary forests as biodiversity repositories, especially regarding the functional and phylogenetic dimensions of biodiversity. Also, studies generally overlook how alpha and beta diversities interact to produce gam...

Old-growth tropical forests harbor an immense diversity of tree species but are rapidly being cleared, while secondary forests that regrow on abandoned agricultural lands increase in extent. We assess how tree species richness and composition recover during secondary succession across gradients in environmental conditions and anthropogenic disturba...

Defoliation is a ubiquitous stressor that can strongly limit plant performance. Tolerance to defoliation is often associated with compensatory growth. Genetic variation in tolerance and compensatory growth responses, in turn, play an important role in the evolutionary adaptation of plants to changing disturbance regimes but this issue has been poor...

In the region of Marqués de Comillas, agricultural areas have gained extension to the detriment of rainforest conserved areas. Both conservation and production areas are necessary for human well-being. The project aims to identify landscape structures that maximize the variables of both components. Conservation: We analyzed variables of the landsca...

Understanding the patterns and processes driving biodiversity maintenance in fragmented tropical forests is urgently needed for conservation planning, especially in species-rich forest reserves. Of particular concern are the effects that habitat modifications at the landscape scale may have on forest regeneration and ecosystem functioning – a topic...

The nutrient demands of regrowing tropical forests are partly satisfied by nitrogen-fixing legume trees, but our understanding of the abundance of those species is biased towards wet tropical regions. Here we show how the abundance of Leguminosae is affected by both recovery from disturbance and large-scale rainfall gradients through a synthesis of...

Effects of long-term rainfall inter-annual variation on regeneration dynamics of tropical dry forests (TDF) are still poorly understood. Such understanding is particularly important to assess the regeneration potential of TDF in landscapes subjected to slash-and-burn farming management. Here, we studied from 2004 to 2016 the effects of inter-annual...

Lacking of large natural areas to conserve, human modified landscapes (HML) emerge as possible scenarios where food production for human-wellbeing and conservation of biodiversity (B) and functions (EF) of forest ecosystems can be balanced. However, conservation in HML is challenging because the agricultural frontier is still advancing. Hence, the...

Economic incentives to offset carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions associated with deforestation and other human activities affecting forest ecosystems depend on robust estimates of changes in forest carbon (C) stocks. Such stocks are difficult to assess in heterogeneous landscapes where the soil properties and the forest structure and functionality vary...

Natural populations deliver a wide range of products that provide income for millions of people and need to be exploited sustainably. Large heterogeneity in individual performance within these exploited populations has the potential to improve population recovery after exploitation and thus help sustain yields over time. We explored the potential o...

Conventional agricultural production systems have achieved extraordinary food volumes since the green revolution, however, it has been done at expense of great environmental costs. Alternatives food production systems use biological processes that occur in nature to obtain products. Many of these processes are based on biotic interactions such as c...

Tropical rainforests harbor a high diversity of tree species, offering a potentially rich array of timber (TFP) and non-timber (NTFP) forest products. The supply of such products has been commonly evaluated at the local (plot) scale; however, little is known about how their availability and diversity change at the landscape scale, particularly in h...

An unanswered question in ecology is whether the environmental factors driving short-term performance also determine the often observed long-term performance differences among individuals. Here, we analyze the extent to which temporal persistence of spatial heterogeneity in environmental factors can contribute to long-term inter-individual variatio...

Aim Tropical forests account for a quarter of the global carbon storage and a third of the terrestrial productivity. Few studies have teased apart the relative importance of environmental factors and forest attributes for ecosystem functioning, especially for the tropics. This study aims to relate aboveground biomass (AGB) and biomass dynamics (i.e...

Response diversity, defined as the variable responses of species to environmental change, has been proposed as. a key determinant of ecosystem resilience. We test this hypothesis along a tropical dry forest successional chronosequence that provides a gradient of species richness and diversity. The system experienced a strong disturbance from Jova,...

Mechanisms of community assembly and ecosystem function are often analyzed using community-weighted mean trait values (CWMs). We present a novel conceptual framework to quantify the contribution of demographic processes (i.e., growth, recruitment, and mortality) to temporal changes in CWMs. We used this framework to analyze mechanisms of secondary...

This paper reviewing plant population ecology studies that have done in Mexican tropical rain forests, particularly at the Los Tuxtlas Tropical Field Station (UNAM). The review considers next topics: (i) population structure and demographic patterns, (ii) population dynamics, (iii) life-history evolution, and (iv) the importance of demography and g...

A historical review of the papers published by Mexican authors in the field of plant ecology shows the notorious growth of this field in Mexico. The research so far undertaken has focused mainly in three types of vegetation (tropical rain forests, tropical deciduous forests and xerophytic shrubs); others are becoming of increasing interest (i.e., t...

One of the major biological mysteries still to be explained is the maintenance of the enormous local tree species diversity in tropical rain forests .This review explores the relationship between the dynamics of natural regeneration and the evolutionary and ecological processes and mechanisms involved in the origin and maintenance of such extraordi...

The magnitude of the carbon sink in second-growth forests is expected to vary with successional biomass dynamics resulting from tree growth, recruitment, and mortality, and with the effects of climate on these dynamics. We compare aboveground biomass dynamics of dry and wet Neotropical forests, based on monitoring data gathered over 3–16 years in f...

Old-growth tropical forests are being extensively deforested and fragmented worldwide. Yet forest recovery through succession has led to an expansion of secondary forests in human-modified tropical landscapes (HMTLs). Secondary forests thus emerge as a potential repository for tropical biodiversity, and also as a source of essential ecosystem funct...

In human-modified tropical landscapes (HMLs) the conservation of biodiversity, functions and services of forest ecosystems dependson persistence of old growth forest remnants, forest regeneration in abandoned agricultural fields, and restoration of degraded lands.Understanding the impacts of agricultural land uses (ALUs) on forest regeneration is cri...

In their commentary on our recent paper (Martínez-Ramos et al. 2016), Arroyo-Rodríguez and Melo (2016, hereafter referred to as A-R&M) present imprecisions that need clarification to avoid misleading the readership of FEE regarding the contribution of our paper.

Many studies suggest that biodiversity may be particularly important for ecosystem multifunctionality, because different species with different traits can contribute to different functions. Support, however, comes mostly from experimental studies conducted at small spatial scales in low-diversity systems. Here, we test whether different species con...

available at: http://www.stri.si.edu/smartreforestation/ This “Watershed White Paper” employs the latest research to explain the fundamental processes supporting natural capital and producing watershed related ecosystem services in a key region of Latin America and the Caribbean. It summarizes the current thinking on watershed economics and confr...

Version interactivo: http://www.stri.si.edu/smartreforestation/ Este "Libro Blanco de la Cuenca del Canal" emplea las más recientes investigaciones para explicar los procesos fundamentales, apoyando el capital natural y la producción de servicios de los ecosistemas relacionados a las cuencas en una región clave de América Latina y el Caribe. Resu...

https://publications.iadb.org/handle/11319/7233 Este "Libro Blanco de la Cuenca del Canal" emplea las más recientes investigaciones para explicar los procesos fundamentales, apoyando el capital natural y la producción de servicios de los ecosistemas relacionados a las cuencas en una región clave de América Latina y el Caribe. Resume las ideas act...

Habitat disturbance in tropical forests has affected the viability of several tree species. In Mexico, populations of Guaiacum sanctum have disappeared in some regions due to a strong habitat reduction which could endanger the genetic diversity and connectivity of remnant populations. In this study, 17 populations from the Yucatán Peninsula were an...