Mammalogy in Mexico has been built through the work and knowledge generated by many researchers. Their contribution is seen today not only by their projects and publications, but by the formation of human resources, where a single professor can impact several generations. The recognition of these researchers by the Mexican Association of Mammalogy has become a tradition. This is the fourth time that the Ticul Álvarez Solórzano Academic Merit Award has been given to investigators whose academic career has truly contributed the knowledge and training of Mammalogists in Mexico. This year the Award is given to Dr. James L. Patton, for his outstanding contribution to the study of mammals, which is recognized not only in Mexico, but also worldwide. This semblance aims to show just some of his great academic career and personality, because describing him as he deserves requires not only more paper and ink, but also better rapporteurs than the authors here. Nonetheless, to have the opportunity to learn more about him, this document includes the words of some colleagues and / or students who have agreed to share their experiences.Jim, as we know him, was born in 1941 in St. Louis Missouri. He is the youngest son of John Franklin Patton II, a urologist, and Marjorie Allyn Marquardt. He earned a BA in Anthropology from the University of Arizona, graduating with honors in 1963. Fortunately for us all, during his Masters in Physical Anthropology, he realized the need to study other mammals beyond primates. Thanks to his interest in a Mammalogy course, for which the TA was Al Gardner, he switched the right path; changing to the Department of Zoology at the same University. That semester he also took a Human Genetics course where, as part of a semester project, developed a technique that allowed tracking cell division in rodents. This work resulted in a publication (Patton 1967), recognized today as a Science Citation Classic. What came after this "little project", along with the growing infatuation to discover the immense diversity of mammals, formed in him the idea of studying this part of nature from a different perspective. Thus he accomplished a Masters and Doctorate Degrees developing cutting-edge research on the evolution of rodents. He completed graduate studies in 1969. That same year, Oliver Pearson, who then was the director of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California at Berkeley, was instrumental in hiring Jim and claims that this was the best decision that he made as director. Since then, Jim has worked for the Department of Zoology (now Integrative Biology) and the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, where besides being Professor, he has been Curator of the Mammal Collection and Associate Director of the Museum. Here is where he developed his long and successful career as Mammalogist. His research interests have been the evolution, genetics, systematics and biogeography of mammals with emphasis on Neotropical rodents and marsupials.The knowledge generated by Jim has been meaningful in evolutiona...

Abstract Background Triatoma dimidiata (Reduviidae: Triatominae) is an important vector of Chagas disease in various countries in the Americas. Phylogenetic studies have defined three lineages in Mexico and part of Central America. While there is a marked genetic differentiation, methods for identifying them using morphometric analyses with landmarks have not yet been fully resolutive. Elliptical Fourier Descriptors (EFDs), which mathematically describe the shape of any closed two-dimensional contours, could be a potentially useful alternative method. Our objective was to validate the use of EFDs for the identification of three lineages of this species complex. Method 84 dorsal view images of individuals of the three lineages were used. Body contours were described with EFDs using between 5 and 30 harmonics. The number of obtained coefficients was reduced by a Principal Components Analysis and the first axis scores were used as shape variables. A linear discriminant function analysis and an Ordination plot of the Discriminant Analysis were performed using the shape variables. A confusion matrix of the Ordination plot of the Discriminant Analysis was obtained to estimate the classification errors, the first five PC scores were statistically compared, and a neural network were then performed using the shape variables. Results The first principal component explained 50% of the variability, regardless the number of harmonics used. The results of Discriminant Analysis get improved by increasing the number of harmonics and components considered. With 25 harmonics and 30 components, the identification of haplogroups was achieved with an overall efficiency greater than 97%. The ordering diagram shown the correct discrimination of haplogroups, with only one error of discrimination corroborated by the confusion matrix. When comparing the first five PC scores, significant differences were found among at least two haplogroups. The 30 multilayer perceptron neural networks were also efficient in identification, reaching 91% efficiency with the validation data. Conclusions The use of EFD is a simple and useful method for the identification of the main lineages of Triatoma dimidiata , with high values ​​of correct identification.

Background Triatoma dimidiata (Reduviidae: Triatominae) is an important vector of Chagas disease in various countries in the Americas. Phylogenetic studies have defined three lineages in Mexico and part of Central America, but methods for identifying them using morphometric analyses with landmarks have not yet been resolved. Elliptical Fourier Descriptors (EFDs), which mathematically describe the shape of any closed two-dimensional contour, could be a potentially useful alternative method. The objective of this work was to validate the use of EFDs for the identification of the three lineages of this species complex.Method A total of 84 dorsal view photographs of individuals of the three lineages were used. The body contours were described with EFDs using between 5 and 30 harmonics. The number of obtained coefficients was reduced by a Principal Components Analysis and the first axis scores were used as shape variables. A Canonical Variances Analysis, a linear discriminant function analysis and a multilayer perceptron neural networks were then performed using the shape variables, identifying the minimum number of harmonics sufficient to produce efficiently classifications.Results The first principal component explained 50% of the variability, regardless of the number of harmonics used, but the results of both, Principal Component Analysis and Canonical Variance Analysis get improved by increasing the number of harmonics and components considered. With 25 harmonics and 8 components, the identification of haplogroups was achieved with an overall efficiency greater than 97%. The 30 multilayer perceptron neural networks were also efficient in identification, reaching 91% efficiency with the validation data.Conclusions The use of EFDs is a simple and useful method for the identification of major lineages of Triatoma dimidiata. This method outperform other novel approaches, therefore could serve as an automated identification method.

Abstract Background Triatoma dimidiata (Reduviidae: Triatominae) is an important vector of Chagas disease in various countries in the Americas. Phylogenetic studies using sequences from the cyt b, ND4, and 16S rRNA genes, have defined three lineages in Mexico and part of Central America, indicated between 6% and 14% divergence among haplogroups. While there is a marked genetic differentiation, methods for identifying them using morphometric analyses with landmarks have not yet been fully resolutive. Elliptical Fourier Descriptors (EFDs), which mathematically describe the shape of any closed two-dimensional contours, could be a potentially useful alternative method. Our objective was to validate the use of EFDs for the identification of three lineages of this species complex. Method 84 dorsal view images of individuals of the three lineages were used. Body contours were described with EFDs using between 5 and 30 harmonics. The number of obtained coefficients was reduced by a Principal Components Analysis and the first axis scores were used as shape variables. Before performing the discrimination of haplogroups, we compared statistically the first five principal components among them. A linear discriminant function analysis and an Ordination plot of the Discriminant Analysis were performed using the shape variables. Finally, a confusion matrix of the Ordination plot of the Discriminant Analysis was obtained to estimate the classification errors. Results When comparing the first five PC scores, significant differences were found among at least two haplogroups for all principal components except for PC3. The first principal component explained 50% of the variability, regardless the number of harmonics used. The results of Discriminant Analysis get improved by increasing the number of harmonics and components considered. With 25 harmonics and 8 components, the identification of haplogroups was achieved with an overall efficiency greater than 97%. The ordering diagram shown the correct discrimination of haplogroups, with only one error of discrimination corroborated by the confusion matrix. Conclusions The use of EFD is a simple and useful method for the identification of the main lineages of Triatoma dimidiata , with high values ​​of correct identification.