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Mezcal Boom and Extinction Debts

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Mexican Fauna in the Anthropocene

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Abstract

In recent years, national and international demand for mezcal has exponentially increased, promoting deforestation and the overexploitation of agave and firewood species from Mexican plant communities at a rate never seen. In this chapter, we present evidence that the impacts of such overexploitation, conducted mainly in Mexican arid ecosystems, will affect ecological interactions leading to the loss of biotic and cultural diversity. We do so by integrating the results of studies on cooperative interactions between plant species (facilitation), pollination, and seed dispersal studies, which explain how multiple ecosystems could collapse. Although interdependence of different ecological networks is indicative of ecosystem fragility and low resilience, these studies are central to closing the gap between ecology and conservation biology. Consequently, the goal of this chapter focuses on showing the importance of realistically modeling the interrelationship between species using a network approach that allows obtaining early indicators of deterioration where the loss of interactions usually precedes the loss of species.

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Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Tania Sánchez Ortiz for her valuable revision to the manuscript which improved it considerably and for her help with the figures’ elaboration. Thanks to Regina Lira who provided important suggestions to the manuscript. Financial support was obtained from PAPIIT-DGAPA-UNAM (IN-214020) and Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACyT-FOP07-2021-04-319061).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Ecología de la Biodiversidad, Instituto de Ecología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México City, México

    Alfonso Valiente-Banuet

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  1. Alfonso Valiente-Banuet
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Correspondence to Alfonso Valiente-Banuet .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Facultad de Ciencias Naturales, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Querétaro, Juriquilla, Mexico

    Robert W. Jones

  2. Colección Nacional de Peces, Instituto de Biologia, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad Universitaria, Ciudad de México, Mexico

    C. Patricia Ornelas-García

  3. Facultad de Ciencias Naturales, Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro, Juriquilla, Querétaro, Mexico

    Rubén Pineda-López

  4. Colección Nacional de Peces, Instituto de Biologia, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad Universitaria, Ciudad de México, Mexico

    Fernando Álvarez

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Valiente-Banuet, A. (2023). Mezcal Boom and Extinction Debts. In: Jones, R.W., Ornelas-García, C.P., Pineda-López, R., Álvarez, F. (eds) Mexican Fauna in the Anthropocene. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17277-9_14

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