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Las abejas y otros polinizadores se enfrentan a una grave amenaza de supervivencia debido a una serie de factores de alcance regional y mundial. Para diseñar estrategias de conservación exitosas, es necesario evaluar el interés de las personas y el nivel de apoyo a la apicultura. Nuestro objetivo fue analizar la percepción de la sociedad sobre la apicultura en una franja de cinco municipios de la zona centro de Veracruz, México. Se emplearon encuestas semiestructuradas con un muestreo aleatorio en cada uno de los municipios con actividad apícola. Los datos cualitativos se analizaron empleando un análisis de contenido contrastivo codificado, y los cuantitativos con estadística inferencial. Se encuestó a un total de 282 personas, de las cuales se encontró que el 89% tiene una percepción positiva de la apicultura, debido a los beneficios para la salud del consumo de miel y los efectos ambientales positivos de la polinización. Sin embargo, el nivel de sus expectativas, interés, experiencia, actitudes y sentimientos no era muy alto, ni sus tendencias de comportamiento eran conducentes a la conservación. El 52% de los encuestados veía la apicultura como “algo” vagamente relacionado con el medio ambiente, el 48% la relacionaba con la salud, el 43% con la nutrición, el 39% con la cultura, el 37% con la economía y el 20% con la educación. Las personas entre 19 y 25 años de edad de los municipios de Xico y Coatepec mostraron el mayor interés por la apicultura. Concluimos que una estrategia de concientización es indispensable para la preservación de la actividad, enfatizando el papel clave de la apicultura en la conservación del medio ambiente y los beneficios sociales tangibles que ofrece.

English abstract: The abuse of inorganic fertilizers in coffee agroecosystems is a worldwide problem. In central Mexico, organic fertilizers are being introduced as an alternative way to restore soil fertility. The aim of this study was to investigate coffee farmers from central Veracruz’s perceptions of bat guano as organic fertilizer. Surveys were conducted with closed and open questions followed by quantitative and qualitative analysis. Eighty-eight percent of the farmers surveyed negatively perceived bat guano. Factors influencing this perception were bats’ physical appearance, their role as disease transmitters, and the difficulties in procuring guano, including the resources needed to extract it, handle it, and transport it safely to their workplaces.Spanish abstract: El abuso de fertilizantes inorgánicos en los agroecosistemas del café es un problema mundial. En el centro de México se comienzan a emplear fertilizantes orgánicos como alternativa para restaurar los suelos. El objetivo de este estudio fue investigar la percepción de los caficultores sobre el empleo del guano de murciélago como fertilizante. Se realizaron encuestas con preguntas abiertas y cerradas que se analizaron cuantitativa y cualtitativamente. El ochenta y ocho por ciento de los cafeticultores encuestados percibieron negativamente al guano de murciélago. Los factores que influyeron en esta percepción fueron: la apariencia física de los murciélagos, su rol como transmisores de enfermedades y las dificultades para adquirir el guano, incluyendo los recursos necesarios para extraerlo, manipularlo y transportarlo de manera segura a sus fincas cafetaleras.French abstract: L’abus d’engrais inorganiques dans les agroécosystèmes de café est un problème mondial. Dans le centre du Mexique, les engrais biologiques commencent à être utilisés pour restaurer les sols. Notre recherche se proposait d’étudier la perception de l’utilisation du guano de chauve-souris comme engrais organique par les caféiculteurs. Des enquêtes semi-structurées (comprenant des questions ouvertes et fermées) ont été menées à partir de méthodes quantitatives et qualitatives. Quatrevingt-huit pour cent des agriculteurs interrogés perçoivent ce guano de manière négative. Parmi les facteurs qui influencent cette perception se trouvent l’apparence physique des chauves-souris, la transmission de maladies et les difficultés pour acquérir le guano, y compris les ressources nécessaires pour l’extraire, le manipuler et le transporter en toute sécurité vers leurs exploitations.

As a governmental function, development for progress and welfare is a highly complex process that involves updating various attributes (such as a paradigm, critical or alternative, depending on of the way in which they are articulated regarding social aspects, environmental, and economic growth, as well as the institutional capacity of public and private actors). Regarding this, we are interested in the municipal institutional capacity (MIC) as a skill to carry out the functions and appropriate tasks that municipalities must fulfill in an effective, efficient, and sustainable way, and it varies considerably, depending on each local context. In order to analyze the relevance of the current official regionalization as a state government strategy for the centralized construction of MIC, an exploratory approach to its spatial behavior in the State of Veracruz, Mexico, was carried out. Given the nature of the study, a purely mixed approach, sequential exploratory design, subnational analysis methodology, and exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) were employed. The variable to be analyzed is the 2016 Municipal Functional Capacities Index (Índice de Capacidades Funcionales Municipales (ICFM)), with the Geostatistics Framework cartographic base of the 2020 Population and Housing Census. The analysis units are 212 municipalities in the 2014–2017 government period. As a result, it was confirmed that the current regionalization was irrelevant, owing to the absence of global spatial autocorrelation, and it was concluded that targeted interventions are necessary according to regional modeling techniques, based on scientific evidence.

Anuran conservation is paramount, as frogs represent a group of vertebrates that is highly threatened by various anthropogenic and environmental factors. Habitat management decisions must therefore be made considering the interactions between amphibians and their microhabitats. We determined the resting microhabitats of an endemic arboreal male frog, considering biotic and abiotic variables in tropical montane forest fragments and shaded coffee agroecosystems in Central Veracruz, Mexico. In a sampling effort undertaken by 580 person-hours, covering 1100 ha, 157 male small-eared treefrogs, Rheohyla miotympanum (Cope, 1863), were recorded resting in 29 plant species. Using coinertia analysis, the resting microhabitats were shown to mainly consist of five herbaceous and shrub species. Post hoc analysis showed that the significant relationship with the resting microhabitats was explained by the importance of the presence of plant species that grow at higher elevations, enabling low frog body temperatu...

Bat acoustic libraries are important tools that assemble echolocation calls to allow the comparison and discrimination to confirm species identifications. The Sonozotz project represents the first nation‐wide library of bat echolocation calls for a megadiverse country. It was assembled following a standardized recording protocol that aimed to cover different recording habitats, recording techniques, and call variation inherent to individuals. The Sonozotz project included 69 species of echolocating bats, a high species richness that represents 50% of bat species found in the country. We include recommendations on how the database can be used and how the sampling methods can be potentially replicated in countries with similar environmental and geographic conditions. To our knowledge, this represents the most exhaustive effort to date to document and compile the diversity of bat echolocation calls for a megadiverse country. This database will be useful to address a range of ecological questions including the effects of anthropogenic activities on bat communities through the analysis of bat sound., The Sonozotz project represents the first nation‐wide library of bat echolocation calls for a megadiverse country.

We describe a new species of Pseudoeurycea from the cloud forests of Huatusco in the state of Veracruz, México. This species belongs to the P. cephalica complex. Pseudoeurycea cafetalera sp. nov. is sister to the clade formed by P. cephalica and P. quetzalanensis. The new species is diagnosed by a stout body, long stout legs, short digits, somewhat webbed hands and feet, a distinctive coloration and by divergent mitochondrial DNA sequences.