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The ethnobotany and biogeography of wild vegetables in the Adriatic islands
BACKGROUND: Archipelagos of islands have played an important role in shaping some of the paradigms of biology, including the theory of the evolution of species. Later, their importance in biology was further emphasised by the theory of island biogeography, which contributed to a better understanding...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2019
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6440087/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30922334 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13002-019-0297-0 |
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author | Łuczaj, Łukasz Jug-Dujaković, Marija Dolina, Katija Jeričević, Mirjana Vitasović-Kosić, Ivana |
author_facet | Łuczaj, Łukasz Jug-Dujaković, Marija Dolina, Katija Jeričević, Mirjana Vitasović-Kosić, Ivana |
author_sort | Łuczaj, Łukasz |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Archipelagos of islands have played an important role in shaping some of the paradigms of biology, including the theory of the evolution of species. Later, their importance in biology was further emphasised by the theory of island biogeography, which contributed to a better understanding of the shaping of species richness not only on real islands, but on isolated habitat islands as well. Although ethnobotany is a well-established discipline, patterns of knowledge about plant uses in archipelagos have never been quantitatively analysed, and the whole concept has been only briefly mentioned in the ethnobiological context. The aim of our study was to record which taxa of wild vegetables have been consumed in the Adriatic islands and to establish if such variables as island size, population size, flora or its isolation are correlated with the number of wild vegetables used. METHODS: We interviewed 225 people (15 from each island). RESULTS: Altogether, the use of 89 species of wild vegetables has been recorded. The largest number of wild vegetables is eaten on the islands of Korčula, Vis and Šolta, and the lowest on Ugljan, Cres and Dugi Otok. The studied independent variables had a small and statistically not significant effect on the wild vegetable list length. The most visible effect was an increasing trend from north-west to south-east, overrunning the typical biogeographical island patterns. Moreover, one of the large and well-populated islands, Korčula, showed an ‘unusually’ high level of wild vegetable use. We hypothesise that the current use of so many species on this island has been maintained by the inhabitants’ awareness that they are the holders of relic knowledge, an awareness reiterated by ethnographic and popular publications, as well as a strong history of famine. The most interesting edible species used in the Adriatic islands are Bunium alpinum, Cytinus hypocystis (both mainly on Pašman), Lotus edulis (on Vis) and Posidonia oceanica (on Vis and Korčula). CONCLUSIONS: The recorded relationships between the demographic and geographical features of the islands were statistically not significant. We assume that cultural and historical factors diversifying the use of plants in particular islands are stronger than the above-mentioned measurable variables. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6440087 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-64400872019-04-11 The ethnobotany and biogeography of wild vegetables in the Adriatic islands Łuczaj, Łukasz Jug-Dujaković, Marija Dolina, Katija Jeričević, Mirjana Vitasović-Kosić, Ivana J Ethnobiol Ethnomed Research BACKGROUND: Archipelagos of islands have played an important role in shaping some of the paradigms of biology, including the theory of the evolution of species. Later, their importance in biology was further emphasised by the theory of island biogeography, which contributed to a better understanding of the shaping of species richness not only on real islands, but on isolated habitat islands as well. Although ethnobotany is a well-established discipline, patterns of knowledge about plant uses in archipelagos have never been quantitatively analysed, and the whole concept has been only briefly mentioned in the ethnobiological context. The aim of our study was to record which taxa of wild vegetables have been consumed in the Adriatic islands and to establish if such variables as island size, population size, flora or its isolation are correlated with the number of wild vegetables used. METHODS: We interviewed 225 people (15 from each island). RESULTS: Altogether, the use of 89 species of wild vegetables has been recorded. The largest number of wild vegetables is eaten on the islands of Korčula, Vis and Šolta, and the lowest on Ugljan, Cres and Dugi Otok. The studied independent variables had a small and statistically not significant effect on the wild vegetable list length. The most visible effect was an increasing trend from north-west to south-east, overrunning the typical biogeographical island patterns. Moreover, one of the large and well-populated islands, Korčula, showed an ‘unusually’ high level of wild vegetable use. We hypothesise that the current use of so many species on this island has been maintained by the inhabitants’ awareness that they are the holders of relic knowledge, an awareness reiterated by ethnographic and popular publications, as well as a strong history of famine. The most interesting edible species used in the Adriatic islands are Bunium alpinum, Cytinus hypocystis (both mainly on Pašman), Lotus edulis (on Vis) and Posidonia oceanica (on Vis and Korčula). CONCLUSIONS: The recorded relationships between the demographic and geographical features of the islands were statistically not significant. We assume that cultural and historical factors diversifying the use of plants in particular islands are stronger than the above-mentioned measurable variables. BioMed Central 2019-03-29 /pmc/articles/PMC6440087/ /pubmed/30922334 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13002-019-0297-0 Text en © The Author(s). 2019 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
spellingShingle | Research Łuczaj, Łukasz Jug-Dujaković, Marija Dolina, Katija Jeričević, Mirjana Vitasović-Kosić, Ivana The ethnobotany and biogeography of wild vegetables in the Adriatic islands |
title | The ethnobotany and biogeography of wild vegetables in the Adriatic islands |
title_full | The ethnobotany and biogeography of wild vegetables in the Adriatic islands |
title_fullStr | The ethnobotany and biogeography of wild vegetables in the Adriatic islands |
title_full_unstemmed | The ethnobotany and biogeography of wild vegetables in the Adriatic islands |
title_short | The ethnobotany and biogeography of wild vegetables in the Adriatic islands |
title_sort | ethnobotany and biogeography of wild vegetables in the adriatic islands |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6440087/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30922334 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13002-019-0297-0 |
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