Rommel Montúfar

Rommel Montúfar
Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador | PUCE · Escuela de Biológia, Laboratorio Mixto Internacional Bio Inca (Biodiversidad y Agricultura Sostenible en los Andes Tropic ales)

PhD.
Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, Escuela de Biología

About

81
Publications
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701
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Additional affiliations
January 2004 - March 2007
Institute of Research for Development
Position
  • PhD Student
August 2007 - present
Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador
Position
  • Professor (Associate)

Publications

Publications (81)
Article
Full-text available
The reciprocal contributions concept provides a holistic approach to understanding management of natural resources in social‐ecological systems. The purpose of this study was to understand how Indigenous peoples build reciprocal contributions with cultural keystone species (CKS) through their dynamic knowledge systems. We explore the cultural value...
Article
Open access article, free to download directly from the journal's website: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S003101822400292X?via%3Dihub You can also access to the paper using the DOI above
Article
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INTRODUCCIÓN. Existe escaso interés en elegir carreras científicas, originado probablemente desde la adolescencia. Las expectativas acerca del trabajo futuro son clave en la elección vocacional, por lo cual es necesario explorar la posible conexión entre ambos fenómenos. OBJETIVO. El objetivo del estudio fue determinar las principales expectativas...
Article
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Societal Impact Statement Palms provide vital plant resources and ecosystem services to people across the tropics. To improve conservation guidance, a “health check” of palms in two highly threatened biodiversity hotspots in Colombia and Ecuador was undertaken. Palms are very diverse in these regions, but over one third are threatened with extincti...
Article
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Agroecology (AE) is a discipline of study that is consistently expanding in the scientific, sociopolitical, and environmental fields, both globally and regionally in Latin America. This study focuses on understanding the dynamics and diversity of motivations that farmers have when deciding whether to adopt AE or not in the Northern Andes of Ecuador...
Article
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El dónut (rosquilla) de los límites sociales y planetarios E l planeta Tierra es como una isla que flo-ta en el espacio. Una isla habitada por la vida. Una isla que sólo es habitable para to-dos, si sus recursos na-turales-ríos, suelos, océanos y bos-ques-se utilizan de forma sostenible. Sin embargo, desde la Revolución Industrial, la humanidad ha...
Article
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Background The palm tribe Phytelepheae (vegetable ivory palms) produces oleaginous fruits traditionally consumed by indigenous and local communities. We therefore analyzed the oil content as well as fatty acid (FA), carotenoid, and tocochromanol composition of fruits collected from 35 palm trees in their natural habitats, namely Phytelephas aequato...
Article
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Research on ecosystem services (ES) is heavily concentrated on ecological and economic indicators and values, with a much more limited understanding of communities' dependence on cultural ES. That body of research is also typically focused on current generations and generates limited insights into the intergenerational dynamics of ES dependence. We...
Method
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In response to global challenges, researchers search for new ways of knowing outside disciplinary boxes to provide long-lasting, fair solutions to complex problems. Transdisciplinary, solution-oriented research widely known as sustainability science transcends disciplinary interactions and puts in conversation a plurality of academic and non-academ...
Article
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Dioecious plants generally display sexual dimorphism in male and female floral traits, potentially attracting slightly different pollinator communities. The sharing of common floral visitors between male and female flowers and their timing of visits to both sexes is of critical importance to ensure plant's reproductive success. Palm inflorescences...
Article
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Este trabajo tuvo como objetivo explorar los intereses y opiniones sobre ciencia y tecnología y la influencia del género en estudiantes ecuatorianos. Para ello, se aplicó el cuestionario Relevancia de la Educación Científica (ROSE, por sus siglas en inglés) a una muestra de 1054 estudiantes de entre 16 y 18 años de segundo y tercer años de bachille...
Article
Seed and pollen dispersal contribute to gene flow and shape the genetic patterns of plants over fine spatial scales. We inferred fine‐scale spatial genetic structure (FSGS) and estimated realized dispersal distances in Phytelephas aequatorialis , a Neotropical dioecious large‐seeded palm. We aimed to explore how seed and pollen dispersal shape this...
Article
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Bactris gasipaes var. gasipaes (Arecaceae, Palmae) is an economically and socially important plant species for populations across tropical South and Central America. It has been domesticated from its wild variety, B. gasipaes var. chichagui, since pre-Columbian times. In this study, we sequenced the plastome of the cultivated variety, B. gasipaes K...
Article
Tagua (Phytelephas aequatorialis Spruce) is a dioecious palm endemic to the forests and pastures of western Ecuador. Ethnobotanical studies from the early 20th century have described the market-based ecosystem services derived from its seed, known as vegetable ivory, but little is known about its non-market ecosystem services. In this paper, we inv...
Article
Tagua (Phytelephas aequatorialis Spruce) is a dioecious palm endemic to the forests and pastures of western Ecuador. Ethnobotanical studies from the early 20th century have described the market–based ecosystem services derived from its seed, known as vegetable ivory, but little is known about its non–market ecosystem services. In this paper, we inv...
Article
As a part of the Chocó Biogeographic region, Western Ecuador harbors high biodiversity and endemism. Ecosystems in Western Ecuador have suffered heavy modification since the middle of the 20th century becoming a critical ecosystem for conservation and a biodiversity hotspot (González-Jaramillo et al. 2016). This has had drastic effects on the conse...
Article
The Cerro Plateado Biological Reserve is a remote, uninhabited and little-explored region of the palm-rich country of Ecuador. We undertook a joint botanical expedition to this southeastern Andean region to collect and document palms in order to complete our knowledge of the palm flora of Ecuador.
Article
Mauritia flexuosa, Bactris gasipaes, and Oenocarpus bataua are among the main palms in the Amazon used for food and medicinal purposes. The food most commonly derived from these are fruits, oil, and the larvae of the insect Rhynchophorus palmarum reared in their trunks. Palm fruits are used for oil extraction as they are rich in saturated fatty aci...
Article
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El Neotrópico constituye un importante centro de diversificación de palmeras con más de 730 especies en 65 géneros (Henderson et al., 1995; Dransfield et al., 2008). De esta enorme diversidad, apenas una especie de palmera ha sido totalmente domesticada desde los tiempos precolombinos: la chonta o chontaduro (Bactris gasipaes var. gasipaes Kunth; C...
Article
The palm tribe Phytelepheae form a clade of three genera and eight species whose phylogenetic relationships and historical biogeography are not fully understood. Based on morphological similarities and phylogenetic relatedness, it has been suggested that Phytelephas seemannii and Phytelephas schottii are synonyms of Phytelephas macrocarpa, implying...
Article
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AIM Pleistocene (2.58 Ma–11.7 ka) climatic fluctuations have shaped intraspecific genetic patterns worldwide; however, their impact on species in many regions remains unknown. In order to determine the impact of Pleistocene climatic fluctuations on the tropical rain forests of western Ecuador, we explored the evolutionary history of the endemic pal...
Article
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Mauritia flexuosa dominated palm swamps are an important forest resource covering over 30,000 km2 across the Amazon basin. In Ecuadorean Amazonia, Mauritia flexuosa, a dioecious and arborescent palm species, forms small and isolated populations or large and dense stands on poorly drained soils. How these populations are genetically interconnected a...
Preprint
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The vegetable ivory palms (Phytelepheae) form a small group of Neotropical palms whose phylogenetic relationships are not fully understood. Three genera and eight species are currently recognized; however, it has been suggested that Phytelephas macrocarpa could include the species Phytelephas seemannii and Phytelephas schottii because of supposed p...
Article
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Ecological interactions play a fundamental role in determining the genetic structure of plant species in time and space. The demography of the Andean Puya hamata has been linked to fire regimes and hummingbird behaviour, which might modify the plant’s population genetic structure. Naturally, poor dispersal results in patches of genetically related...
Article
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Post-dispersal seed removal by ground-foraging frugivores promotes secondary dispersal of large seeds, reducing seed predation and increasing recruitment and regeneration. We studied how habitat disturbance influences seed removal patterns in the large-seeded palm Phytelephas aequatorialis within three habitats forming a continuum of disturbance (a...
Article
Background and aims: Palms are vital to worldwide human nutrition, in particular as major sources of vegetable oils. However, our knowledge of seed and fruit lipid diversity in the family Arecaceae is limited. We therefore aimed to explore relationships between seed and fruit lipid content, fatty acid (FA) composition in the respective tissues, ph...
Article
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Background: As concerns about agrodiversity loss and its impact on food security increase, interest in seed-saving practices and motivations has risen, especially in regions characterized by ancestral farming. Agroecology practitioners in the northern Andes of Ecuador (n = 65) participated in this study to describe (1) the dynamics of intergenerat...
Article
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Phytelephas aequatorialis is the commercially exploited ivory palm in western Ecuador, where less than 25% of the natural forest remains. To determine the conservation status of this palm, we visited 15 populations, growing under different degrees of human disturbance in both the lowlands and the lower Andean slopes. We collected leaf material for...
Article
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Research and conservation of palm species relies on training new generations of palm biologists, especially in tropical countries. Such trainings pave the way to answer new questions related to palm biology, sustainable management, the cultural and economic links between humans and palms, and build conservation strategies through education and civi...
Article
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Premise: Third-generation sequencing methods generate significantly longer reads than those produced using alternative sequencing methods. This provides increased possibilities for the study of biodiversity, phylogeography, and population genetics. We developed a protocol for in-solution enrichment hybridization capture of long DNA fragments appli...
Article
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Societal Impact Statement In the Tropical Andes millions of people depend upon the use of wild and domesticated biodiversity for their livelihoods, but the complex interactions between the ecological and social components of the region’s ecosystems remain poorly understood. Better knowledge of these interactions can help provide solutions to reduce...
Preprint
Full-text available
Third generation sequencing methods generate significantly longer reads than those produced using alternative sequencing methods. This provides increased possibilities to better study biodiversity, phylogeography and population genetics. We developed a protocol for in-solution enrichment hybridization capture of long DNA fragments applicable to com...
Preprint
Third generation sequencing methods generate significantly longer reads than those produced using alternative sequencing methods. This provides increased possibilities to better study biodiversity, phylogeography and population genetics. We developed a protocol for in-solution enrichment hybridization capture of long DNA fragments applicable to com...
Article
Full-text available
Andean orogenesis has driven the development of very high plant diversity in the Neotropics through its impact on landscape evolution and climate. The analysis of the intraspecific patterns of genetic structure in plants would permit inferring the effects of Andean uplift on the evolution and diversification of Neotropical flora. In this study, usi...
Article
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What is the contribution of seed saving to food security and food sovereignty? How seed saving builds resilience at a community level? Central University of Ecuador, Ohio University and the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador joined efforts to find links between seed saving practices and community resilience through the mobilization of their...
Article
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Knowledge of the biology of Ecuadorian palms remains very limited. A particular case is the American oil palm, Elaeis oleifera (Kunth) Cortés, first described in Ecuador in 1986. The genus Elaeis has a trans-Atlantic (Africa-America) distribution, with E. oleifera from the Neotropics and E. guineensis Jacq. from Africa. It has been hypothesized tha...
Article
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The common bottlenose dolphin, Tursiops truncatus, is widely distributed along the western coast of South America. In Ecuador, a resident population of bottlenose dolphins inhabits the inner estuarine area of the Gulf of Guayaquil located in the southwestern part of the country and is under threat from different human activities in the area. Only o...
Poster
The paucity of palaeoecological data is acute in the Neotropics, where the low number of good quality records (with reliable dating and continuous sedimentation) prevents the development of a regional understanding of the vegetation and climate dynamics. Within the Neotropics, low wetlands are particularly poorly known due to the scarcity of potent...
Research
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Video que resume los dispersores de O. bataua y M. fleuxuosa, captados por cámaras tramp durante la fase campo de proyecto de investigación sobre Dispersión en palmeras amazónicas. https://vimeo.com/199593099.
Article
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When asked to think about heat production in the natural world, our thoughts first turn to mammals, birds, and other warm-blooded animals. As mammals ourselves, we are often thankful for our ability to produce heat internally to raise body temperature above ambient temperature, through a process called endothermy. This phenomenon has fascinated nat...
Presentation
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Genética de poblaciones de Mauritia flexuosa en pantanos de la Amazonía Occidental, y de la comunidad de dispersores primarios y secundarios.
Chapter
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El noroeste de América del Sur presenta una geografía sumamente compleja, con grandes contrastes y abruptos gradientes ecológicos. Este entorno es particularmente propicio para la diversificación biológica y ecológica, y la familia de las palmeras lo ilustra perfectamente, con 332 especies (142 endémicas) en la zona considerada, conformada por Colo...
Article
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Ecuador tiene una elevada diversidad de palmeras (Arecaceae) en su territorio (134 especies nativas), algunas de las cuales constituyen potenciales fuentes de aceites. Se realizó una revisión bibliográfica que incluyó 24 trabajos que reportan la composición de ácidos grasos y contenido de aceites de frutos de palmeras pertenecientes a los géneros A...
Article
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The degradation of the Andean cloud forest raises strong biological conservation issues and threatens the sustainability of a crucial water resource. The idea that nurse-based restoration can accelerate the recovery of these forests is underexplored, despite its promise as a restoration technique. Recent conceptual models predict that facilitation...
Article
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Phytelephas aequatorialis is endemic to western Ecuador. Vegetable ivory (tagua, the hard endosperm) and leaves for thatch (cade) are harvested from the palm and commercialised. Export of vegetable ivory from Ecuador reached a value of 14 million US$ in 2011, making it the second most important product from native palms in the country. Vegetable iv...
Data
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Prioridades de investigación genética y ecológica para la conservación de especies y bosques y el desarrollo forestal en Ecuador Bosques y desarrollo forestal en Ecuador: realidad e investigación pública Los bosques del Ecuador continental ocupan 12,8 millones de hectáreas, el 60,7% de la superficie total potencial de bosques (Sierra 2013). No toda...
Article
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Background: Intraspecific functional variability (IFV) along altitudinal gradients is a powerful proxy to infer the responses of plants to abrupt environmental changes. We envisage that IFV shows distinctive patterns in tropical and extratropical alpine regions. Aims: To characterise the patterns and explore the origin of IFV in a tropical alpine s...
Conference Paper
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Bosques y desarrollo forestal en Ecuador: realidad e investigación pública Los bosques del Ecuador continental ocupan 12,8 millones de hectáreas, el 60,7% de la superficie total potencial de bosques (Sierra 2013). No toda esta superficie corresponde a bosques intactos: resulta del balance entre procesos históricos antropogénicos (deforestación y de...
Chapter
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La flora de palmeras de Ecuador se destaca por su extraordinaria diversidad en relación con el tamaño del país. Para apreciarlo, se pueden por ejemplo comparar las 200 especies de palmeras presentes en toda la región amazónica, desde el pie de los Andes hasta el Atlántico, con las 136 especies que Ecuador concentra en un espacio mucho más restringi...
Chapter
Full-text available
La flora de palmeras de Ecuador se destaca por su extraordinaria diversidad en relación con el tamaño del país. Para apreciarlo, se pueden por ejemplo comparar las 200 especies de palmeras presentes en toda la región amazónica, desde el pie de los Andes hasta el Atlántico, con las 136 especies que Ecuador concentra en un espacio mucho más restringi...
Conference Paper
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Conference Paper
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Chapter
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Pholidostachys synanthera (wayuri palm)
Chapter
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Palmera solitaria de 8–15 m de alto y 25–30 cm de diámetro, monoica (una misma planta tiene flores masculinas y femeninas). Tallo densamente cubierto de espinas negras y aplanadas de hasta 20 cm de largo. Corona semicircular con 8–20 hojas pinnadas de hasta 7 m de largo, erectas en la base y arqueadas hacia la punta. Cada hoja con ~120 pares de fol...
Article
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The wax palm (Ceroxylon echinulatum) and palm heart (Prestoea acuminata) are key elements in Andean natural forests. This ecosystem is th- reatened by deforestation and habitat degra- dation, thus, it is vital to explore the impact of anthropogenic activities on the ecological struc- ture and preferences of these species in order to develop proper...
Article
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The wax palm (Ceroxylon echinulatum) is an arborescent, dioecious and slow-growing palm distributed on Andean slopes at 1000-2000 m elevation in Ecuador and northern Peru. The leaves of wax palm have been traditionally harvested and used for the making of handicrafts during Easter celebrations. It has been suggested that removal of unexpanded leave...
Conference Paper
Many native palm species from NW South America bear oil-rich fruit (up to 73 % oil in dry fruit weight). Palm oil is generally extracted either from the mesocarp or the endosperm. In the majority of cases the mesocarp oils of palms from NW South America are characterized by their high concentration of monounsaturated fatty acids, while endosperm oi...
Article
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We review resilience to natural and anthropogenic disturbance of palm populations and communities in tropical America. Response of palms to disturbance depends on their morphological traits, their reproductive strategies and the impacts of these traits and strategies on phenology and gene flow. Human impact induces changes in genetic structure, inc...
Article
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Ecuador has one of the highest palm’s population diversity in the Neotropics (134 natives species); some of them have the potential as new sources of oils and fats. A bibliographic search showed 24 studies describing fatty acid composition for Ecuadorian palms (Astrocaryum, Attalea, Bactris, Cocos, Elaeis, Euterpe, Mauritia, Oenocarpus, and Phytele...
Article
Ecuador tiene una elevada diversidad de palmeras (Arecaceae) en su territorio (134 especies nativas), algunas de las cuales constituyen potenciales fuentes de aceites. Se realizó una revisión bibliográfica que incluyó 24 trabajos que reportan la composición de ácidos grasos y contenido de aceites de frutos de palmeras pertenecientes a los géneros A...
Article
Full-text available
To conserve tropical forests, it is crucial to characterise the disturbance threshold beyond which populations of tropical trees are no longer resilient. This approach is still not widely employed, especially with respect to the effects of moderate disturbances. Compensation effects, such as positive interactions among plants, are addressed even mo...
Article
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The fatty acid (FA) composition of Oenocarpus bataua oil from 38 samples collected over a large geographical range (i.e. French Guiana and Peru) was analyzed. Fifteen fatty acids were obtained from the mesocarp of this palm species. Oleic (72.7%) and palmitic (18.1%) acids were the predominant FAs. Minor FAs were cis-vaccenic acid (2.3%), linoleic...
Article
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Resumen El interés por estudios de estructuración genética de poblaciones de palmeras y su implicación en la conservación de la biodiversidad se ha incrementado en los últimos años. El presente documento describe la metodología a ser utilizada por el proyecto PALMS para estudios de estructuración genética de poblaciones silvestres de las palmeras:...
Article
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With the aim of testing the evolutionary relationships between Oenocarpus bataua (formerly Jessenia bataua) and other Oenocarpus species (Arecaceae), a phylogenetic study of tribe Euterpeae (Arecaceae) was conducted using 3,6 kb of non-coding chloroplast DNA sequence data. The results of maximum parsimony analysis support the monophyly of Euterpeae...
Thesis
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Structure génétique, biochimique, morphologique et écologique de Oenocarpus bataua Mart. (Arecaceae) : perspectives pour la valorisation durable d’une ressource forestière néotropicale
Article
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We report the isolation of 23 microsatellite loci obtained from a (GA)n-enriched genomic library of Oenocarpus bataua var. bataua. The average number of alleles per locus, the mean observed and expected heterozygosities for these microsatellite loci revealed a high level of variability. The transferability of the developed markers to other Oenocarp...