DIAGNOSIS · CHOCAMAN CLOUD FOREST
Pollinators: From the National Diagnosis to Our Territory
Mexico has a national diagnosis of its pollinators. We have our eyes on the Chocamán cloud forest, observation by observation. This is what the country’s big map shows—and what we see when we look closely at our piece of the Altas Montañas.
The National Landscape
Why Pollinators Sustain Our Tables
Up to 70% of the crops we consume directly depend on animal pollination, a service valued at around $164 billion for global agriculture (Klein et al., 2007). In Mexico—one of the planet’s 17 megadiverse nations—more than 85% of plants used by humans rely on pollinators to reproduce (Ashworth et al., 2009).
The Diagnosis: Current Status of Pollinators in Mexico (gob.mx) reviewed 399 studies to map this landscape. It revealed a major gap: while there is an abundance of information on bees, there is very little on nocturnal pollinators like moths—with just 15 studies on nocturnal butterflies and moths across the entire country. At a global scale, IPBES highlights the three major threats: habitat loss, pesticides, and climate change.
But a national diagnosis is a country-scale map. To take action, we must bring it down to the ground.
Our Territory
What We See in Chocamán
In a single municipality within the Altas Montañas, we have documented and verified more than 240 research-grade insect records on iNaturalist—the scientific foundation of the Chocamán Insect Field Guide. Among them are pollinators from every major group:
Native Bees
Around a dozen species, almost all native. These include two stingless bees (Frieseomelitta nigra and Trigona fulviventris) and three orchid bees (Eulaema and Euglossa)—precisely the type of pollinators that the national diagnosis recognizes as key for crops.
Diurnal Butterflies
The most diverse group of all, ranging from the iconic Blue Morpho (Morpho helenor montezuma) to dozens of nymphalids, whites, sulphurs, and skippers.
Nocturnal Moths — Our Contribution to the National Gap
This is what the country barely records, but we do. We documented two moths classified as threatened in the United States. On this page, we put the spotlight on the Giant Sphinx moth (Cocytius antaeus), because in addition to being threatened, it is a nocturnal pollinator—the exact group the national diagnosis barely studies, and the core focus of our work here. The second, Syssphinx raspa, was recorded for its conservation value, even though as a saturniid moth it does not play a pollinating role. In Chocamán, both are fully documented.
Flower Beetles, Hoverflies, and Social Wasps
Cetoniid beetles, flower flies (hoverflies), and social wasps complete the picture of floral visitors. Some, like the Polybia wasp we have observed on chayote flowers, pollinate indirectly as they move from bloom to bloom; others, like the Mexican Honey Wasp (Brachygastra mellifica), even produce honey.
Augochloropsis ignita
Cocytius antaeus
Anartia jatrophae
Eulema cingulata
Field Observation · 2024
During the prolonged drought of May 2024, with temperatures rising, many insects gathered to feed on fermented bananas: blue morphos, “eighty-eight” butterflies, wasps, and flies—several of them pollinators. They haven’t returned since. This is exactly the kind of shift we are tracking on the ground.
The Big Map vs. The Ground
Two Complementary Perspectives
| National Diagnosis |
399
studies reviewed for all of Mexico
15
studies on nocturnal moths — a recognized data gap
Micratena · Chocamán
240+
verified records in a single municipality
2
US-threatened moths documented here —one of them a nocturnal pollinator
The figures are not equivalent—the national data counts published studies, while ours counts verified observations—but together they show the same reality: fine-grained, local data is exactly what is missing.
The Root Cause
Pesticides Without Knowledge or Monitoring
At Micratena, we identified a core cause behind pollinator decline: the use of pesticides without proper knowledge or monitoring. In agricultural municipalities managed by smallholders, farmers often rely solely on recommendations from the retailers selling the products. They frequently lack training on how to handle them, remain unaware of the damage caused to their health and the environment, and do not realize they are wiping out beneficial insects in the process—including the very pollinators their own crops require.
In our own field records, pollinators, agricultural pests, and the natural enemies of those pests coexist. Spraying blindly erases all three.
The data makes it clear: alongside bees and butterflies, we find flea beetles and rose chafers (pests), but also ladybugs, assassin bugs, and hoverflies—the natural pest controllers that a healthy field already has on its side. Broad-spectrum insecticides do not differentiate; they eliminate the ally just like the pest.
Furthermore, the impact does not stop at the sprayed field. In Chocamán, organic coffee farmers from the Catuai Amarillo organization maintain groves teeming with insects and pollinators—yet their plots suffer from chemical drift due to neighboring chayote and sugarcane crops. To buffer this drift, they rely on living barriers. It is a precise portrait of the problem: not even those who choose not to spray are safe from those who do so blindly.
Our Response
Conscious Pest Management
That is why we created Conscious Pest Management (CPM): monitoring before taking action, protecting pollinators and natural enemies, and treating chemical control as just one more data-driven tool rather than a first reflex.
The Altas Montañas region depends on coffee, chayote, sugarcane, and bananas, alongside corn and beans for subsistence. Coffee primarily faces rust (roya), a fungus—a front where Micratena does not operate. However, in crops like chayote, the indiscriminate use of insecticides and acaricides directly hits pollinators. That is where we want to step in: partnering with chayote producers so they can manage their pests without wiping out their allies.
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