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This article addresses the role North American entrepreneurs have played in the redefinition of productive work in two Mexican villages: Taxco, the city of silver, and Álamos. The entrepreneurial businesses set up by North Americans in these towns have had a fundamental role in the constitution of the social spaces as tourist places. The article analyzes these entrepreneurs as change makers in transforming the cultural identity of these places. Before the entrepreneurs’ arrival, the towns experienced severe economic crises and were not considered tourist destinations. This article seeks to fill the research gap on North American entrepreneurs and their sociocultural impact on tourism sites in Mexico. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Caldasia is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this article, we propose night tourism as a research topic. This concept seeks to analyze the use of the night as a public space that generates a tourist offer and revalues a place or activity. To carry out this analysis, we will use the concept of the economy of intimate night experience, which will allow us to understand and offer planning proposals for the generation of value through the institutionalization and conceptualization of the night-time use of places, practices, symbols, and relationships. The work concludes with a set of recommendations for the urbanization, planning, and security in the night shows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Pasos: Revista de Turismo y Patrimonio Cultural is the property of Universidad de La Laguna, Instituto Universitario de Ciencias Politicas y Sociales and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

A treatment of the family Juncaceae Juss. for the flora of Mexico is presented. The family includes two genera in this country: Juncus L. and Luzula DC. The first genus consists of 31 species and the second one of five. Keys for identification of the taxa, morphological descriptions, taxonomic notes, and information about the geographic distribution are provided, as well as some illustrations. One species is endemic: Juncus chiapasensis Balslev occurs only in the state of Chiapas. A second species, J. textilis Buchenau, is a local endemism, occurring in the state of Baja California as well as in the state of California in the United States of America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses how the construction and institutionalization of social representations in Tepoztlán, Mexico, have influenced the definition of tourism in this community. We propose the concept of an intimate experience economy to analyze the forms of institutionalization that places, practices, symbols, and relationships have and how they together generate what most people consider authentic experiences, recreation, and comfort. The article concludes that tourism is a complex network of social relations that has a tendency to create asymmetric relations of exploitation and culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Ciencia en Desarrollo is the property of Universidad Pedagogica y Tecnologica de Colombia, Centro de Investigaciones y Extension and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

One of the most important questions in ecology is: which are the environmental factors that explain the high plant diversity of tropical forests? We studied the floristic composition of palm communities and their relationship to soil nutrients in two localities of the Chocó region to understand (1) how soil nutrients vary between the two localities; (2) what is the relationship between soil nutrients and palm floristic composition; (3) what are the most important nutrients that explain the variation in floristic composition of palm communities; and (4) how does the abundance of the most exuberant understory and canopy palm species vary along the concentration gradient of the most important nutrients? We established 20 transects (5 x 500 m) and identified all palm individuals of all growth stages. Soil samples were taken at each transect at the beginning, middle, and end. Macronutrients (Al, Ca, Mg, K, P) were extracted with the Mehlich-III technique and their concentrations were analyzed by inductively coupled plasma emission spectrometry (ICP-OES). We used Mantel test, partial Mantel tests, linear regressions, and non-metric multidimensional scaling to determine if the concentration of nutrients was related to the floristic composition. We found a total of 9 158 individuals and 33 species of palms in the 5 ha covered by our transects. Floristic composition had a positive and significant correlation with soil nutrients (rM = 0.63-0.69) and with geographical distance between transects (rM= 0.71-0.75), whereas the soil nutrients were highly correlated with geographical distance (rM = 0.72). We also found a small, yet significant, relationship between soil fertility and the abundance of understory palms, but no relationship with canopy palms. Our results demonstrate for the first time that soils play an important role in the composition of palm communities at local scales in the Chocó region, and that infertile and phosphorus-rich soils have the highest palm diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current economic growth models encourage natural resource-rich countries to become suppliers of raw materials for growing capital markets which severely affect conditions of large natural areas such as the western Amazon Basin, one of the most biodiverse regions on Earth. The process will accelerate as this region becomes more accessible with the development of transportation infrastructure as well as the extraction of non-renewable resources. Ameliorating these pressures in order to safeguard biodiversity and the ecosystem services it provides to humanity will require that decision-making processes are informed by relevant and up-to-date datasets. Here, we capitalize on newly available data for several species groups, aquatic and terrestrial ecological systems, and the distribution of threats and ecosystem services, to measure and map biodiversity state and pressure, and conservation response and benefits for sub-basins across a >2 million-km² area. This information, organized according to the Pressure-State- Response-Benefits framework, should support for decisions on conservation and sustainable development investments, and monitoring their impact over the long term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]