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Ethnobotanical Knowledge Is Vastly Under-Documented in Northwestern South America
A main objective of ethnobotany is to document traditional knowledge about plants before it disappears. However, little is known about the coverage of past ethnobotanical studies and thus about how well the existing literature covers the overall traditional knowledge of different human groups. To br...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2014
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3887111/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24416449 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0085794 |
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author | Cámara-Leret, Rodrigo Paniagua-Zambrana, Narel Balslev, Henrik Macía, Manuel J. |
author_facet | Cámara-Leret, Rodrigo Paniagua-Zambrana, Narel Balslev, Henrik Macía, Manuel J. |
author_sort | Cámara-Leret, Rodrigo |
collection | PubMed |
description | A main objective of ethnobotany is to document traditional knowledge about plants before it disappears. However, little is known about the coverage of past ethnobotanical studies and thus about how well the existing literature covers the overall traditional knowledge of different human groups. To bridge this gap, we investigated ethnobotanical data-collecting efforts across four countries (Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia), three ecoregions (Amazon, Andes, Chocó), and several human groups (including Amerindians, mestizos, and Afro-Americans). We used palms (Arecaceae) as our model group because of their usefulness and pervasiveness in the ethnobotanical literature. We carried out a large number of field interviews (n = 2201) to determine the coverage and quality of palm ethnobotanical data in the existing ethnobotanical literature (n = 255) published over the past 60 years. In our fieldwork in 68 communities, we collected 87,886 use reports and documented 2262 different palm uses and 140 useful palm species. We demonstrate that traditional knowledge on palm uses is vastly under-documented across ecoregions, countries, and human groups. We suggest that the use of standardized data-collecting protocols in wide-ranging ethnobotanical fieldwork is a promising approach for filling critical information gaps. Our work contributes to the Aichi Biodiversity Targets and emphasizes the need for signatory nations to the Convention on Biological Diversity to respond to these information gaps. Given our findings, we hope to stimulate the formulation of clear plans to systematically document ethnobotanical knowledge in northwestern South America and elsewhere before it vanishes. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3887111 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2014 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-38871112014-01-10 Ethnobotanical Knowledge Is Vastly Under-Documented in Northwestern South America Cámara-Leret, Rodrigo Paniagua-Zambrana, Narel Balslev, Henrik Macía, Manuel J. PLoS One Research Article A main objective of ethnobotany is to document traditional knowledge about plants before it disappears. However, little is known about the coverage of past ethnobotanical studies and thus about how well the existing literature covers the overall traditional knowledge of different human groups. To bridge this gap, we investigated ethnobotanical data-collecting efforts across four countries (Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia), three ecoregions (Amazon, Andes, Chocó), and several human groups (including Amerindians, mestizos, and Afro-Americans). We used palms (Arecaceae) as our model group because of their usefulness and pervasiveness in the ethnobotanical literature. We carried out a large number of field interviews (n = 2201) to determine the coverage and quality of palm ethnobotanical data in the existing ethnobotanical literature (n = 255) published over the past 60 years. In our fieldwork in 68 communities, we collected 87,886 use reports and documented 2262 different palm uses and 140 useful palm species. We demonstrate that traditional knowledge on palm uses is vastly under-documented across ecoregions, countries, and human groups. We suggest that the use of standardized data-collecting protocols in wide-ranging ethnobotanical fieldwork is a promising approach for filling critical information gaps. Our work contributes to the Aichi Biodiversity Targets and emphasizes the need for signatory nations to the Convention on Biological Diversity to respond to these information gaps. Given our findings, we hope to stimulate the formulation of clear plans to systematically document ethnobotanical knowledge in northwestern South America and elsewhere before it vanishes. Public Library of Science 2014-01-09 /pmc/articles/PMC3887111/ /pubmed/24416449 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0085794 Text en © 2014 Cámara-Leret et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Cámara-Leret, Rodrigo Paniagua-Zambrana, Narel Balslev, Henrik Macía, Manuel J. Ethnobotanical Knowledge Is Vastly Under-Documented in Northwestern South America |
title | Ethnobotanical Knowledge Is Vastly Under-Documented in Northwestern South America |
title_full | Ethnobotanical Knowledge Is Vastly Under-Documented in Northwestern South America |
title_fullStr | Ethnobotanical Knowledge Is Vastly Under-Documented in Northwestern South America |
title_full_unstemmed | Ethnobotanical Knowledge Is Vastly Under-Documented in Northwestern South America |
title_short | Ethnobotanical Knowledge Is Vastly Under-Documented in Northwestern South America |
title_sort | ethnobotanical knowledge is vastly under-documented in northwestern south america |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3887111/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24416449 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0085794 |
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