Publicaciones recientes de integrantes de la REDCiC

 A continuación se comparten dos textos recientes de integrantes de la REDCiC:

Fluctuation of ecological niches and geographic range shifts along chile pepper's domestication gradient.

Natalia E. Martínez-Ainsworth, Hannah Scheppler, Alejandra Moreno-Letelier, Vivian Bernau, Michael B. Kantar, Kristin L. Mercer, Lev Jardón-Barbolla. Ecology and Evolution. 28 de noviembre de 2023.

Abstract

Domestication is an ongoing well-described process. However, while many have studied the changes domestication causes in plant genetics, few have explored its impact on the portion of the geographic landscape in which the plants exist. Therefore, the goal of this study was to understand how the process of domestication changed the geographic space suitable for chile pepper (Capsicum annuum) in its center of origin (domestication). C. annuum is a major crop species globally whose center of domestication, Mexico, has been well-studied. It provides a unique opportunity to explore the degree to which ranges of different domestication classes diverged and how these ranges might be altered by climate change. To this end, we created ecological niche models for four domestication classes (wild, semiwild, landrace, modern cultivar) based on present climate and future climate scenarios for 2050, 2070, and 2090. Considering present environment, we found substantial overlap in the geographic niches of all the domestication classes. Yet, environmental and geographic aspects of the current ranges did vary among classes. Wild and commercial varieties could grow in desert conditions, while landraces could not. With projections into the future, habitat was lost asymmetrically, with wild, semiwild, and landraces at greater risk of territorial declines than modern cultivars. Further, we identified areas where future suitability overlap between landraces and wilds is expected to be lost. While range expansion is widely associated with domestication, we found little support of a constant niche expansion (either in environmental or geographical space) throughout the domestication gradient in chile peppers in Mexico. Instead, particular domestication transitions resulted in loss, followed by capturing or recapturing environmental or geographic space. The differences in environmental characterization among domestication gradient classes and their future potential range shifts increase the need for conservation efforts to preserve landraces and semiwild genotypes.

Influence of climate variability on change in storage of overexploited aquifers in a semi-arid region.

Juan Manuel Navarro Céspedes, Jesús Horacio Hernández Anguiano, Pedro Camilo Alcántara Concepción, Christian Dominguez Sarmiento, Jorge Luis Morales Martínez, Peter S. K. Knappett, Miguel Angel Acosta Reyes, Yanmei Li, Viridiana Piña González & Xiaoxiao Zha. Theoretical and Applied Climatology. 27 de noviembre de 2023.

Abstract

Arid and semi-arid regions are vulnerable to natural disturbances and particularly, to anthropogenic climate change. In these regions, water resources are scarce, and groundwater is commonly the main source of water for municipal supply, agricultural, and industrial purposes. Groundwater overexploitation is a common issue for these regions, where overextraction, climate variability, and recharge are responsible for groundwater storage evolution. This study aims to find teleconnections through wavelet analysis between inter-annual rates of change in storage, obtained from geostatistical groundwater modeling, and climate variability. Continuous wavelet transform, cross-wavelet analysis, and wavelet coherence were used to analyze and characterize non-stationary patterns of variability of precipitation (PP), standardized precipitation index (SPI), minimum (Min_Temp) and maximum temperature (Max_Temp), Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), the Oceanic Niño Index (ONI), the Pacific-North American pattern (PNA), the Caribbean Index (CAR), and groundwater change in storage (ΔGS) semestral time series. The results suggest significant influences of the indices on ΔGS, PP, Min_Temp, and EVI. PNA manifested an important influence in short periods (2–4 years) in all aquifers, ONI showed influence mainly over long periods (8–16 years), and CAR had influence in periods of high hurricane activities. In addition, under extreme climatic conditions (El Niño or La Niña) the higher/lower water demand increase their influence on groundwater level response creating an indirect link between climate indices and ΔGS. This research can serve as a good indicator of the climate variations behavior and can provide information to understand the regional climate effects of the ENSO phenomenon in overexploited aquifers.