La domesticación de Stenocereus stellatus (Pfeiffer) Riccobono (Cactaceae)
This study aimed at analyzing processes of domestication by silvicultural forms of management. The effects of artificial selection on morphology and reproductive biology of Stenocereus stellatus are analyzed in wild; wild-managed in situ (silvicultural management) and cultivated populations from the Tehuacan Valley and La Mixteca Baja. People select the phenotypes of this columnar cactus species with relatively larger and sweeter fruits with thinner peel and fewer spines, favoring their numbers in wild populations managed in situ as well as in home gardens. Favorable phenotypes prevail in wild populations managed in situ, indicating that artificial selection has had significant effects under this form of management. These phenotypes are especially abundant in home gardens, which suggests that artificial selection is even stronger under cultivation. Favorable phenotypes are scarce or absent in non-manipulated wild populations. Such morphological divergence is maintained despite the reproductive system of S. stellatus, is self-incompatible in all populations, and even when there were not found spatial and temporal barriers for pollen flow between wild and cultivated populations. Abundance of favorable phenotypes in areas managed by people may be explained by action of artificial selection, while absence of some domesticated phenotypes in wild populations seems to be due to pollen incompatibility between some cultivated phenotypes and wild populations, but it could also be due to pressures of natural selection against cultivated phenotypes.