Land abandonment as driver of woody vegetation dynamics in Tamaulipan thornscrub at Northeastern Mexico.

Background: Vegetation structure is defined as the temporal and spatial distribution of plant species in a particular site. Vegetation structure includes vertical and horizontal distribution and has been widely used as an indicator of successional changes. Ecological succession plays an essential role in the determination of the mechanisms that structure plant communities under anthropogenic disturbances.

Relative contribution of ecological and biological attributes in the fine-grain structure of ant-plant networks.

Background: Ecological communities of interacting species analyzed as complex networks have shown that species dependence on their counterparts is more complex than expected at random. As for other potentially mutualistic interactions, ant-plant networks mediated by extrafloral nectar show a nested (asymmetric) structure with a core of generalist species dominating the interaction pattern. Proposed factors structuring ecological networks include encounter probability (e.

Flower-mediated plant-butterfly interactions in an heterogeneous tropical coastal ecosystem.

Background: Interspecific interactions play an important role in determining species richness and persistence in a given locality. However at some sites, the studies, especially for interaction networks on adult butterflies are scarce. The present study aimed the following objectives: (1) determine butterfly species richness and diversity that visit flowering plants, (2) compare species richness and diversity in butterfly-plant interactions among six different vegetation types and (3) analyze the structure of butterfly-flowering plant interaction networks mediated by flowers.

Flower, fruit phenology and flower traits in Cordia boissieri (Boraginaceae) from northeastern Mexico.

We characterized variations in Cordia boissieri flowers and established if these variations occur between plants or between flowering events. Flowering and fruiting was measured for 256 plants. A GLM test was used to determine the relationship between flowering and fruit set processes and rainfall.