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One of the most consistent findings in the literature is that non-electoral political participation has a positive and robust association with electoral participation. However, all democracies have citizens who regularly engage in non-electoral political action but do not vote. Curiously, this abstentionist-activist profile has received little attention. Drawing on elements of the civic voluntarism model and electoral theories, this study tests an argument as to why and when active citizens—i.e., citizens who are politically active in non-electoral terms—are more likely to abstain from the polls. Using data from the International Social Survey Program and multivariate logistic regressions, the results show that when active citizens lack ties to social organizations, their probability of abstaining from the polls increases significantly. However, the results also showed that membership in organizations is relevant only for active citizens who express a limited sense of civic duty. This article discusses the electoral consequences of growing levels of activism based on forms of coordination that are not rooted in traditional civic associations.

Summary The effects of the present biodiversity crisis have been largely focused on the loss of species. However, a missed component of biodiversity loss that often accompanies or even precedes species disappearance is the extinction of ecological interactions. Here, we propose a novel model that (i) relates the diversity of both species and interactions along a gradient of environmental deterioration and (ii) explores how the rate of loss of ecological functions, and consequently of ecosystem services, can be accelerated or restrained depending on how the rate of species loss covaries with the rate of interactions loss. We find that the loss of species and interactions are decoupled, such that ecological interactions are often lost at a higher rate. This implies that the loss of ecological interactions may occur well before species disappearance, affecting species functionality and ecosystems services at a faster rate than species extinctions. We provide a number of empirical case studies illustrating these points. Our approach emphasizes the importance of focusing on species interactions as the major biodiversity component from which the ‘health’ of ecosystems depends. Lay Summary

The source of Darwin’s illness has been a contentious issue in the literature for almost 70 years. Different causal factors have been invoked to account for his symptoms, including Chagas disease. The Chagas hypothesis is based upon Darwin’s diary, in which he narrates his experience with kissing bugs, the main vector of the protozoan Trypanosoma cruzi, the etiological agent of Chagas disease. In this contribution, we examine the consistency of the “Chagas disease hypothesis” in the light of current ecological and epidemiological knowledge of the disease in Chile. According to his diary and letters, during his overland trips, Darwin slept in rural houses and outdoors for 128 days in a “hyperendemic” area for Chagas disease, more than exposing him to kissing bugs. This observation conveys a likely additional source of infection than previously considered, which might reinforce the idea that Chagas disease contributed to Darwin’s manifest physical deterioration.

In contemporary Latin America, deep-seated social discontent with political elites and institutions has been, paradoxically, the counterpart of democratic stability and resilience. This paradox suggests that scholarly assessments of democracy are, at least partially, at odds with citizens’ own views of democracy. This article thus develops a framework to describe citizens’ everyday experience with civil, political, and social entitlements associated with democracy. It introduces the framework by analyzing the structural underpinnings of democratic discontent in Chile and then applying it to the analysis of perceived citizenship entitlements in 18 countries, using the AmericasBarometer data. Significant variance is observed across time and both across and within countries. The descriptive findings also imply that only a (declining) minority of Latin American citizens feel fully entitled to civil, political, and social citizenship rights. We advocate the need to bring the demand side of democracy back to the analysis of democratic shortcomings and crises.

Understanding the factors determining the spatial and temporal variation of ecological networks is fundamental to the knowledge of their dynamics and functioning. In this study, we evaluate the effect of elevation and time on the structure of plant-flower-visitor networks in a Colombian mountain forest. We examine the level of generalization of plant and animal species and the identity of interactions in 44 bipartite matrices obtained from eight altitudinal levels, from 2200 to 2900 m during eight consecutive months. The contribution of altitude and time to the overall variation in the number of plant (P) and pollinator (A) species, network size (M), number of interactions (I), connectance (C), and nestedness was evaluated. In general, networks were small, showed high connectance values and non-nested patterns of organization. Variation in P, M, I and C was better accounted by time than elevation, seemingly related to temporal variation in precipitation. Most plant and insect species were specialists and the identity of links showed a high turnover over months and at every 100 m elevation. The partition of the whole system into smaller network units allowed us to detect small-scale patterns of interaction that contrasted with patterns commonly described in cumulative networks. The specialized but erratic pattern of network organization observed in this tropical mountain suggests that high connectance coupled with opportunistic attachment may confer robustness to plant-flower-visitor networks occurring at small spatial and temporal units.

The literature on political participation has consistently found that protest positively and significantly correlates with voting. However, Chile can be considered a deviant case to this pattern. During the last decade, Chileans who participated in street demonstrations were unlikely to participate in elections. What explains this anomaly? We argue that this rupture between participation in protest and in elections results from an effective distancing between social-movement organisations (SMOs) and institutional politics. However, this distancing of SMOs from party politics has not been homogeneous. To examine this heterogeneity, we conduct a comparative design of two cases: the labour and student movements. Based on a mixed-methods study that combines interviews with movement leaders and surveys of protest participants in marches, we seek to highlight the mediating role of SMOs in the promotion of different forms of political participation.

Bombus terrestris is a European bumblebee extensively commercialized worldwide for crop pollination. In Chile, this species was introduced in 1997 and after confinement escape, it has spread and established in several localities of central-southern Chile and in the Argentine Patagonia. The South American carpenter bee Xylocopa augusti, in turn, has been recently reported in central Chile, and as B. terrestris, this species has become increasingly common, often found in sympatry with B. terrestris in some localities. While intestinal parasites such as the flagellate trypanosome Crithidia bombi, the microsporidium Nosema bombi, and the neogregarine protozoan Apicystis bombi, show high levels of specialization on the Bombus genus, parasites often increase their host range, especially after invading novel habitats, hence creating new infection disease scenarios. In this work, we used molecular techniques to detect the presence of the intestinal pathogens of B. terrestris in coexisting X. augusti from different localities in the Metropolitan Region of Chile. Our results revealed the presence of the three pathogens in B. terrestris only, with population prevalence broadly similar to that reported in other studies. The carpenter bee X. augusti did not show evidence of any of the three parasites examined, indicating that this invader species is not recipient of any of the parasite species present in B. terrestris.

Una revisión de Ollerton, J., 2024. Birds & Flowers: An Intimate 50 Million Year Relationship. Pelagic Publishing, London, 312 pp.

Identifying natural selection in wild plant populations is a challenging task, as the reliability of selection coefficients depends, among other factors, on the critical assumption of data independence. While rarely examined, selection coefficients may be influenced by the spatial and genetic dependence among plants, which violates the independence criterion, leading to biased selection estimates. In this study, we examine the extent to which frugivore-mediated selection coefficients are influenced by spatial and genetic information. We used Generalized Additive Models to deal with spatial and relatedness issues. We compared the fit of the Lande and Arnold multivariate model with models including spatial, genetic relatedness, and spatial + genetic relatedness corrections. Our results indicate that fit in standard models was substantially increased after including the spatial structure. Likewise, the model including the genetic relatedness accounted for a variance fraction not explained by spatial structure, which permitted the identification of significant selection acting upon fruit size, a trait not detected under selection otherwise, and dealt better with autocorrelation that any other model. The model including spatial and genetic effects altogether accounted for 65% of the variance, compared to 13% of the standard model. The spatial structure and genetic relatedness played an important role in this system. As genetic effects revealed significant selection upon fruit traits otherwise hidden under standard selection estimates, field studies that control for plant dependency may provide more realistic selection estimates in natural plant populations.

Anthropogenic disturbance can modify habitat structure and resource availability, potentially disrupting ecological interactions. This issue may be critical for pollination and seed dispersal, which determine natural regeneration. The mistletoe Tristerix corymbosus is almost exclusively pollinated by a hummingbird (Sephanoides sephaniodes) and dispersed by a marsupial (Dromiciops gliroides). We examined the extent to which human‐induced habitat change and resource availability influence the interaction rate of this plant–pollinator–seed disperser system, along a forest transformation gradient (from native forest to exotic plantations). We estimated visitation rates of S. sephaniodes and D. gliroides on 70 T. corymbosus mistletoes using camera traps. We related visitation rates to habitat structural features and resource availability (flowers and fruits of the mistletoe and the neighborhood) using spatially explicit models. Sephanoides sephaniodes and D. gliroides visitation rates responded positively to shrub and bamboo cover, moss abundance, and mistletoe spatial arrangement. Pollination and seed dispersal interactions were sensitive to the flower and fleshy‐fruit neighborhoods, being variable across months. Further, D. gliroides showed a non‐random spatial association with fleshy‐fruited plants. A larger sunlight incidence on disturbed habitats may prevent the disruption of key ecological interactions by increasing resource availability. This effect would result from the presence of shade‐intolerant plants, which are benefited by sunlight exposure. Patches of disturbed habitat may enhance landscape heterogeneity, providing complementary resources to the native remnants.