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Non-Lévy Mobility Patterns of Mexican Me’Phaa Peasants Searching for Fuel Wood

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Abstract

We measured mobility patterns that describe walking trajectories of individual Me’Phaa peasants searching for and collecting fuel wood in the forests of “La Montaña de Guerrero” in Mexico. These 1-day excursions typically follow a mixed pattern of nearly-constant steps when individuals displace from their homes towards potential collecting sites and a mixed pattern of steps of different lengths when actually searching for fallen wood in the forest. Displacements in the searching phase seem not to be compatible with Lévy flights described by power-laws with optimal scaling exponents. These findings, however, can be interpreted in the light of deterministic searching on heavily degraded landscapes where the interaction of the individuals with their fuel wood-scarce environment produces alternative searching strategies than the expected Lévy flights. These results have important implications for future management and restoration of degraded forests and the improvement of the ecological services they may provide to their inhabitants.

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Acknowledgements

We very much appreciate PAPIIT-UNAM Grants IN-118306, IN-107309 and IN-304409, PASPA-DGAPA grants, a CONACYT-CNPq Bi-national Joint Project on the Dynamics of Mexico-Brazil Tropical Forests and the Centro de Ciencias de la Complejidad (C3) for financial support. ODS is supported by a fellowship from Brazilian National Council for Research (CNPq 302486/2010-0). OM and EC thank the Universidade Federal de Paraná in Brazil for hosting a sabbatical leave. We thank Pedro Miramontes and Lynna Kiere for useful comments. Special thanks to all the Me’Phaa volunteers and the Xuajin Me’Phaa AC ONG.

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  1. Octavio Miramontes

    Present address: Departamento de Física, UFPR, Curitiba, 81530-900, Brazil

  2. Eliane Ceccon

    Present address: Departamento de Biología, UFPR, Curitiba, 81530-900, Brazil

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Física and Centro de Ciencias de la Complejidad, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad Universitaria, Coyoacán, 04510, DF, Mexico

    Octavio Miramontes

  2. Laboratório de Termitologia, Entomologia, Universidade Federal de Vicosa, Vicosa, MG, Brazil

    Og DeSouza

  3. Posgrado en Ciencias Biológicas, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad Universitaria, Coyoacán, 04510, DF, Mexico

    Diego Hernández

  4. Centro Regional de Investigaciones Multidisciplinarias, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Av. Universidad s/n, Circuito 2, 62210, Col. Chamilpa, Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico

    Eliane Ceccon

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  1. Octavio Miramontes
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Correspondence to Octavio Miramontes.

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Miramontes, O., DeSouza, O., Hernández, D. et al. Non-Lévy Mobility Patterns of Mexican Me’Phaa Peasants Searching for Fuel Wood. Hum Ecol 40, 167–174 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-012-9465-8

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