Ethnobotany of the Mountain Regions of Mexico

Author Biography

Alejandro Casas is a Mexican researcher, with bachelor and master’s degrees in Biological Sciences from the Faculty of Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and a doctoral degree in Plant Sciences from the University of Reading, UK. Since 1997 he is fulltime Researcher at the Instituto de Investigaciones en Ecosistemas y Sustentabilidad (Institute of Research on Ecosystems and Sustainability), at UNAM, campus Morelia, in the state ofMichoacán. He is member of the National System of Researchers, with the highest level (level 3). Dr. Casas has conducted research in the following fields: (1) ecology, culture, and evolution of biodiversity under processes of domestication, (2) management of ecosystems and landscape domestication, (3) ecology for the sustainable management of biotic resources and ecosystems, (4) in situ management of genetic resources, and (5) ethnoecology and biocultural heritage. His research group has made theoretical contributions on the evolutionary mechanisms operating on current processes of domestication, as well as on the origins of food production, agriculture, and domestication in the Neotropics. Also, his group has made contributions to understand biocultural processes generating agrobiodiversity and the bases for their conservation, models of sustainable use of non-timber forest products and agroforestry systems. His work has been mainly conducted in regions of Mexico and Peru and has collaborated in studies in Brazil. The results of his research have been published in nearly 200 peer reviewed articles, more than 100 book chapters, and 13 books that have been authored or edited. These and other works can be consulted and downloaded from ResearchGate (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/ Alejandro-Casas/research) Dr. Casas is section editor of the journals Botanical Sciences Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution and Ethnobotany Research and Applications and member of the Mexican, Latin American, and international societies of botany, ecology, and ethnobiology. He was promoter of the Biosphere Reserve Tehuacán-Cuicatlán, Director of the Centro de Investigaciones en Ecosistemas (CIEco), and promoter of the creation of the Instituto de Investigaciones en Ecosistemas y Sustentabilidad (IIES) and the Escuela Nacional de Estudios Superiores (ENES), UNAM-Morelia. José Blancas is a Mexican researcher, with bachelor and master’s degrees in biological sciences from the Faculty of Sciences of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and a doctoral degree from the Centro de Investigaciones en Ecosistemas (Ecosystem Research Center, UNAM). Since 2015 he is fulltime Researcher at the Centro de Investigación en Biodiversidad y Conservación (Biodiversity and Conservation Research Center), at the Autonomous University of the State of Morelos, in the city of Cuernavaca. He is member of the National System of Researchers (level 2). Dr. Blancas has conducted researchin the following fields: (1) ethnobotany, (2) management strategies of wild plant resources by traditional human communities, (3) ecological consequences of plant management, and (4) non-timber forest products. He has taught courses on the epistemology of ethnobiology, as well as on quantitative methods used in ethnobiological studies. He has published 35 articles, 4 books, and 20 book chapters and currently is the editor-in-chief of Etnobiología, the journal of the Mexican Ethnobiological Association A.C. (AEM), and section editor of Botanical Sciences. His works can be consulted and downloaded from ResearchGate (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/ Jose-Vazquez-26/research).