Wesley Dáttilo

Institute of Ecology INECOL | INECOL · Ecoetología

Knowledge of the mechanisms that shape biodiversity is essential to understand the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of interacting species. Recent studies posit that most of the organization of mutualistic networks is shaped by differences in species abundance among interacting species. In this study, we examined the mutualism involving plants...

Trying to unravel Darwin's entangled bank further, we describe the architecture of a network involving multiple forms of mutualism (pollination by animals, seed dispersal by birds and plant protection by ants) and evaluate whether this multi-network shows evidence of a structure that promotes robustness. We found that species differed strongly in t...

Risky in the tropics It is well known that diversity increases toward the tropics. Whether this increase translates into differences in interaction rates among species, however, remains unclear. To simplify the problem, Roslin et al. tested for predation rates by using a single approach involving model caterpillars across six continents. Predator a...

Aim Similar to species richness, ecological interactions can vary across latitudinal and environmental gradients. Knowing the patterns and drivers of such variation could help us to better understand the role of species interactions in maintaining biodiversity. In this study, we analysed the macroecological patterns of the structure and interaction...

Based on graph theory studies this book seeks to understand how tropical species interact with each other and how these interactions are affected by perturbations in some of the most species-rich habitats on earth. Due to the great diversity of species and interactions in the tropics, this book addresses a wide range of current and future issues wi...

Assessing plant-pollinator relationships often employs a snapshot approach to describe the complexity and dynamic involving species interactions. However, this framework overlooks the nuanced changes in species composition, their interactions, and the underlying drivers of such variations. This is particularly evident on less explored temporal scal...

Although ecologists have identified the key factors influencing species distribution along elevation gradients, each mountain’s distinct characteristics, including its geology and biotic colonization processes, are often overlooked. The uniqueness of each mountain ecosystem implies that species distribution and the factors affecting them may vary a...

Anthropogenic changes in natural habitats are one of the main causes of disruptions in plant-pollinator interaction due to plant community alterations, which can affect pollinator persistence. However, pollinators can expand their interactions by exploring alternative resources to compensate for already-established partners’ loss. Ecological networ...

In the current debate on academic publishing, the roles of editors and reviewers are under scrutiny. To capture views on these roles, assess discrepancies between their perceived and desired functions, and gauge acceptance of the peer-review process, we conducted a survey, yielding 569 responses from 70 countries. Our findings reveal two key insigh...

Numerous studies have explored the organization of pollination networks and the factors influencing these interactions at various spatial and temporal scales. Within these networks, species vary in their significance and influence on one another (i.e. their interactive roles), and understanding which factors determine this significance enables us t...

Tropical montane cloud forests are known for their unique biodiversity and their critical role in sustaining ecosystem services; however, approximately 50% of their original cover in Mexico was estimated to have been lost by 1998. The Mexican ecoregion that supports these ecosystems experienced one of the highest rates of deforestation between 2001...

The honeybee Apis mellifera is an introduced managed pollinator species in many world regions and exhibits a high capacity to compete for resources against native bee species. Despite empirical evidence showing that A. mellifera establishes a great number of interactions within plant-bee interaction networks (i.e., high interactive role), little is...

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...

Cattle ranching is an economic activity responsible for the loss of large extensions of tropical dry forest around the world. Several studies have demonstrated that the use of inadequate practices of this activity in tropical forests (e.g., fire, agrochemicals, and lack of rotational grazing systems of cattle in pastures) have negative consequences...

Main Animals not only forage for abundant and nearby resources, but their diets can also be influenced by abiotic and geographic factors. This often results in non‐random interactions among species. We investigate how seed density, distance from nest, abiotic (e.g., climate stability, temperature, precipitation) and geographic factors (e.g., latitu...

Aim Long‐standing theory predicts that the intensity of biotic interactions increases from high to low latitudes. Studies addressing geographic variation in predation on insect prey have often relied on prey models, which lack many characteristics of live prey. Our goals were to explore global latitudinal patterns of predator attack rates on standa...

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...

Ecological interactions and evolutionary processes in areas of endemism remain little studied despite the fact that identifying the patterns of functional signatures in areas of endemism could reveal important information regarding community assembly and functioning. Here, we investigated whether areas of endemism of the orchids of Megamexico are h...

Interactions between ants and plants can form complex ecological networks, which may have their structure affected by human-induced habitat modification, such as urbanization. In this study, we investigated if the species diversity and the network topology of ant-plant co-occurrence networks (facultative associations between plants and ants) differ...

The ecological factors driving specialisation in species interaction networks along environmental gradients at large spatial scales are poorly understood. Although such drivers can have synergistic impacts, previous work has mainly assessed effects of network type and the abiotic environment separately. We conducted a meta-analysis of existing netw...

Tropical forests are highly vulnerable to ongoing deforestation, which often involves converting land for agricultural use. While tropical agroforests have been promoted as wildlife-friendly systems, limited information is available on the ability of agroforests to provide diverse fruits that attract birds and thus contribute to essential ecologica...

Anthropogenic climate change is the defining environmental challenge of this century, posing an existential threat not only to humans but also to the vast array of plants and animals that inhabit our planet. Among these, insects reign as the largest and most diverse group of organisms, playing critical roles in nutrient cycling, pollination, seed d...

Climate change is ten times faster now than in the last global warming event, 56 million years ago, with temperature and extreme weather dramatically increasing due to human activity. This rapid changes in climate affect all levels of biodiversity. However, despite their high global biodiversity, only 3 percent of global climate change literature i...

Climate change is ten times faster now than in the last global warming event, 56 million years ago, with temperature and extreme weather dramatically increasing due to human activity. This rapid changes in climate affect all levels of biodiversity. However, despite their high global biodiversity, only 3 percent of global climate change literature i...

There is growing evidence showing that insect diversity is rapidly decaying due to direct and indirect impacts derived from climate change. However, most studies have only focused on how current and future changes in climate may affect insect diversity, physiology and behavior, neglecting their numerous biotic interactions with different organisms....

1. Agroecosystem simplification for greater food production has led to the loss of eco- system services such as pest control by predators. Plant diversification has shown excellent potential to improve the diversity of crop predators such as spiders. 2. However, in agroecosystems with frequent disturbances such as annual crops, it is unknown whethe...

Context Most tropical forest landscapes are highly fragmented, have habitat patches varying in size and shape, and display different degrees of perturbation, but with high conservation values. Therefore, a major goal of landscape ecology is to discover the actual spatial scale at which landscape composition and structure affect biological processes...

Ceratozamia morettii, C. brevifrons, and C. tenuis are cycads considered endangered in montane forests in the center of Veracruz state. However, the amount of theoretical and empirical information available on the historical distribution of these species and how they could be affected in the future by the effects of climate change still needs to be...

Background and Aims: Extrafloral nectaries (EFNs) are secretory glands of an aqueous solution composed mainly of sugars, amino acids and lipids, frequently used as food resource by ants, which tend to protect their host plants against herbivorous insects. Although the Amazon forest is recognized worldwide for its high plant diversity, few studies h...

Human activities in the Anthropocene have led to the conversion of a significant area of the Earth's surface to agroecosystems, including tree plantations such as eucalyptus. Brazil, as the largest producer of eucalyptus timber, faces the challenge of preserving its rich biodiversity, particularly in the Atlantic Forest biome, which is one of the w...

The objective of this study was to determine the critical thermal minimum [CTmin], critical thermal maximum [CTmax], and thermal tolerance range of A. mellifera at three different elevations located in the Mexican Transition Zone: 11; 1,324, and 3,304 m.a.s.l. In general, we found that the CTmin of A. mellifera was lower at the site with the highes...

The honeybee (Apis mellifera) is one of the most important pollinator species because it can gather resources from a vast variety of plant species, including both natives and introduced, across its geographical distribution. Although A. mellifera interacts with a large diversity of plants and shares resources with other pollinators, there are some...

1. Agroecosystem simplification for greater food production has led to the loss of eco- system services such as pest control by predators. Plant diversification has shown excellent potential to improve the diversity of crop predators such as spiders. 2. However, in agroecosystems with frequent disturbances such as annual crops, it is unknown whethe...

The analysis of landscape features through remote sensing methods is one of the most used methods for analyzing the landscape's composition, structure, and functions, including qualitative and quantitative changes. This study identified potential sites for conserving floristic diversity in the municipality of Tlalixcoyan in Veracruz. A supervised...

Understanding how the functional role of species within seed-dispersal networks varies across geographical and climatic gradients can reveal the mechanisms driving network organization. Using data for 157 bird species from all continents, we evaluated the variation of species’ centrality within local networks across species’ climatic niches (occupi...

Sponges are widely spread organisms in the tropical reefs of the American Northwest-Atlantic Ocean, they structure ecosystems and provide services such as shelter, protection from predators, and food sources to a wide diversity of both vertebrates and invertebrates species. The high diversity of sponge-associated fauna can generate complex networks...

Interactions between plants and herbivores are central in most ecosystems, but their strength is highly variable. The amount of variability within a system is thought to influence most aspects of plant-herbivore biology, from ecological stability to plant defense evolution. Our understanding of what influences variability, however, is limited by sp...

The primates of Mexico, Ateles geoffroyi , Alouatta palliata , and Alouatta pigra , are seriously threatened by habitat loss, fragmentation, and illegal hunting and trade. Very little is known about the extent of illegal trade and its impacts on declining primate populations. Our study proposes a potential method based on estimating the number of i...

Graphical abstract Highlights d Ecological metadata were compiled for 7,694 sites across the Brazilian Amazon d Accessibility and proximity to research facilities influenced research probability d Knowledge gaps are greater in uplands than in wetlands and aquatic habitats d Undersampled areas overlap predicted hotspots of climate change and defores...

Understanding community assembly in habitat patches requires an integrative approach, considering the potential role of local and regional factors and organisms' dispersal abilities among patches. For this, assessing the degree of species overlap between patches (nestedness) can be particularly informative, especially regarding different taxa and d...

Purpose of Review Despite the potential and increased use of multiscale spatial analysis in landscape ecology, the theoretical and empirical information available in the literature generally focuses on species habitat modeling and the effects of landscape modification on biotic interactions have not been sufficiently explored. In this study, we pro...

Bird–plant seed‐dispersal networks are structural components of ecosystems. The role of bird species in seed‐dispersal networks (from less [peripheral] to more connected [central]), determines the interaction patterns and their ecosystem services. These roles may be driven by morphological and functional traits as well as evolutionary, geographical...

Habitat loss and land-use change in tropical forests have modified the composition and configuration of natural landscapes, driving biodiversity loss. Through studies covering different approaches to diversity and functional traits, a more holistic comprehension may be drawn regarding the effects of habitat transformation. In this study, we evaluat...

Background Rhizosphere microbiomes are fundamental for plant health, development, and productivity, but can be altered by the incidence of soil-borne pathogens. The dysbiosis (disturbance of the microbiome structure of healthy plants) caused by these pathogens, combined with the recruitment of benefcial microorganisms by the diseased plant, may cau...

Aim Most biodiversity studies have considered species to be isolated entities, neglecting the fact that their biotic interactions and spatial variation are fundamental to their persistence across elevational gradients. Here, using a standardized sampling methodology, we evaluated how and why the composition of flower–visitor interactions (i.e. bet...

Dung beetles have been introduced to non-native sites to perform dung removal function in cattle pastures. Despite some species becoming invasive, their behavioural and reproductive strategies remain to be elucidated in detail. Here we evaluated the shift in behaviour and reproduction of two species of dung beetles, Euoniticellus intermedius and Di...

Despite the relevance of community ecological reserves, little is known about changes in spatio-temporal biodiversity patterns in these reserves. Here, we analyzed the spatio-temporal dynamics of the dung beetle assemblages in 4 different environments (primary forest, riparian vegetation, secondary forest, and pasture) in the Bajlum Pakal Community...

Although biological invasions are a common and intensively studied phenomenon, most studies often ignore the biotic interactions that invasive species play in the environment. Here, we evaluated how and why invasive plant species are interconnected within the overall frugivory network of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, an important global biodiversi...

The study of population movements and abundance are useful to evaluate the reduction of biodiversity due to changes in landscape composition and configuration. These parameters are modulated by the effects of landscape on individuals' behaviours and species' life histories (e.g., specialists and generalists in forest use). We used hierarchical mode...

Host–parasite distribution and interactions depend on geography, evolutionary associations, species composition, and their response to environmental variables. In this sense, host specificity as a key parasite's life history trait may determine parasite community composition but can be difficult to identify in nature. The haemosporidian–avian host...

Ceratozamia morettii, C. brevifrons and C. tenuis are cycads considered endangered in montane forests in the center of Veracruz state. However, the amount of theoretical and empirical information available on the historical distribution of these species and how they could be affected in the future by the effects of climate change is still limited....

The Neotropical region hosts 4225 freshwater fish species, ranking first among the world's most diverse regions for freshwater fishes. Our NEOTROPICAL FRESHWATER FISHES data set is the first to produce a large‐scale Neotropical freshwater fish inventory, covering the entire Neotropical region from Mexico and the Caribbean in the north to the southe...

Research findings in natural sciences need to be comparable and reproducible to effectively improve our understanding of ecological and behavioural patterns. In this sense, knowledge frontiers in biodiversity studies are directly tied to taxonomic research, especially in species-rich tropical regions. Here we analysed the taxonomic information avai...

In recent decades, the interest in complexity of ant‐plant relationships has increased considerably. However, because the spatial and biological information generated on ant‐plant interaction networks is dispersed in the literature it is necessary to synthesise current information, detect knowledge gaps, and outline needs for research leading to th...

Biotic interactions are a key component of the proper functioning of ecosystems. However, information on biotic interactions is spatially and taxonomically biased and limited to several groups. The most efficient strategy to fill these gaps is to combine spatial information (species ranges) with different sources of information (functional and fiel...

Registrar interacciones ecológicas entre mamíferos es un evento muy raro, incluso usando cámaras trampa, por lo cual la mayoría de los estudios recurren a evaluar los patrones de co-ocurrencia espaciales y temporales como alternativa. Sin embargo, la co-ocurrencia de especies puede ser generada por diversos factores y no únicamente por las interacc...

Plant–herbivore relationships involve a significant amount of global biodiversity within complex interaction networks. Buprestidae (Coleoptera) are highly specialized herbivores, and several species have important economic and ecological impacts. We used tools derived from network theory to evaluate the structure of a plant-buprestid metaweb at thr...

Identifying species' extinction risks and understanding their ecological associations are considered critical steps for achieving long-term conservation of biodiversity in the face of global changes. We evaluated the potential impact of global climate change (GCC) on the co-distribution patterns of 12 Mexican endemic hummingbirds and 118 plants the...

The conversion of natural areas into agricultural landscapes results in different mosaics of land use types, modifying biodiversity and consequently altering the patterns of ecological interactions, such as between frugivorous bats and ectoparasites. Our objectives were to investigate whether variations in the configuration and composition of human...

Studies at local spatial scales have shown that the generalist honeybee Apis mellifera L. can strongly affect the structural organization and properties of pollination networks. However, there is still little knowledge on how the connectivity of the honeybee within networks (i.e., interactive role) could affect pollination networks at a global scal...

Tropical studies traditionally describe insect diversity variation throughout the year. The temporally structured responses of insect assemblages to climate seasonality vary across ecosystems due to gradients of resource availability and limiting ecological factors. These idiosyncratic responses might be particularly true across the vast geographic...

Rainforest fragmentation drastically affects biodiversity and species composition, mainly due to habitat loss. Several studies have already shown the effects of forest fragmentation on plant and ant communities. To date, however, there is limited empirical knowledge of how forest fragmentation affects ant-plant interaction in networks. We investiga...

Most of the available knowledge in the literature on Mexican fishes and their parasites refers to information within political divisions and/or hydrological basins in the country. Indeed, only a few studies have analyzed the helminth fauna of these vertebrates as a biological group distributed nation‐wide. This lack of available knowledge prevents...

In the last decade, the number of studies dealing with how species interaction networks are structured by landscape has increased in the literature. However, many studies quantify landscape metrics at one single spatial extent, without considering the effect at multiple spatial extents. To the best of our knowledge, no study has explicitly addresse...

Despite the recent advances regarding the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of ant–trophobiont mutualistic interactions, understanding their spatial variation remains a challenge. An approach involving species interaction networks is a helpful tool to overcome it because it allows us to compare how different species interact among them. Here, we...

In mammals, ecological interactions are difficult to observe directly, so they are usually inferred from co‐occurrence data. Direct interpretation of co‐occurrence patterns can be complicated since they may be the result of different processes such as habitat selection. We propose a logical framework along with multispecies occupancy models, to dis...

Bird-plant seed-dispersal networks are structural components of ecosystems and have been used to assess species' functional roles. The role that bird species play in seed-dispersal networks (from less connected [peripheral] to more connected [central]), determine the interaction patterns and their ecosystem services. These roles may be determined b...

Despite the historical efforts to list and organize the taxonomic knowledge about the Brazilian ant fauna, the most diverse in the world, several gaps regarding species distribution data and sampling coverage persist. In an attempt to fill some of these gaps, we here apply a scientometric approach to provide an updated overview of the ants of Brazi...

Despite the historical efforts to list and organize the taxonomic knowledge about the Brazilian ant fauna, the most diverse in the world, several gaps regarding species distribution data and sampling coverage persist. In an attempt to fill some of these gaps, we here apply a scientometric approach to provide an updated overview of the ants of Brazi...

Landscape changes in tropical environments result in long-lasting and complex changes in biodiversity that involve several biological responses (e.g., loss of species diversity and functional diversity). Both taxonomic and functional diversity might respond differently to land-use change, and this response might also vary depending on several facto...