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Factors affecting local plant knowledge in isolated communities from Patagonian steppe: Metacommunity theory is revealed as a methodological approach

The Patagonian steppe is a refuge for several indigenous peoples who live in relatively isolated communities, depending heavily on natural resources for their activities, health, and food security. The local ecological knowledge is a reservoir that generates full wellbeing and for which it must be t...

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Autores principales: Santoro, Flávia Rosa, Richeri, Marina, Ladio, Ana Haydée
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9467323/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36094933
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274481
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author Santoro, Flávia Rosa
Richeri, Marina
Ladio, Ana Haydée
author_facet Santoro, Flávia Rosa
Richeri, Marina
Ladio, Ana Haydée
author_sort Santoro, Flávia Rosa
collection PubMed
description The Patagonian steppe is a refuge for several indigenous peoples who live in relatively isolated communities, depending heavily on natural resources for their activities, health, and food security. The local ecological knowledge is a reservoir that generates full wellbeing and for which it must be the object of protection and local development. In this study, we aimed to find which factors can influence local ecological knowledge from a metacommunity on the Patagonian steppe. We analyzed variation in knowledge about cultivated and gathered plants used as medicinal, edible, and firewood according to multiple factors widely discussed in the ethnobiological literature: age, gender, formal education, occupation, indigenous identity, contact with urban centers, use of biomedicine, hunting, and handcrafted textile production. We conducted semi-structured interviews with local experts, accessed by the snowball technique. We found that formal education is a key factor in the variation of local ecological knowledge among people. In addition, we found that knowledge varies between people who practice activities inside and outside the home, concentrating knowledge between cultivated and gathered plants, respectively. Our urbanization proxies did not point to an influence of this factor on local knowledge, but specialists living in a larger community with signs of internal urbanization processes had much less knowledge. Our results allowed us to visualize the importance of studying metacommunities as a whole, to verify complexities and intersections of overlapping factors. Studies in metacommunities open up a range of possibilities for ethnobiological analysis.
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spelling pubmed-94673232022-09-13 Factors affecting local plant knowledge in isolated communities from Patagonian steppe: Metacommunity theory is revealed as a methodological approach Santoro, Flávia Rosa Richeri, Marina Ladio, Ana Haydée PLoS One Research Article The Patagonian steppe is a refuge for several indigenous peoples who live in relatively isolated communities, depending heavily on natural resources for their activities, health, and food security. The local ecological knowledge is a reservoir that generates full wellbeing and for which it must be the object of protection and local development. In this study, we aimed to find which factors can influence local ecological knowledge from a metacommunity on the Patagonian steppe. We analyzed variation in knowledge about cultivated and gathered plants used as medicinal, edible, and firewood according to multiple factors widely discussed in the ethnobiological literature: age, gender, formal education, occupation, indigenous identity, contact with urban centers, use of biomedicine, hunting, and handcrafted textile production. We conducted semi-structured interviews with local experts, accessed by the snowball technique. We found that formal education is a key factor in the variation of local ecological knowledge among people. In addition, we found that knowledge varies between people who practice activities inside and outside the home, concentrating knowledge between cultivated and gathered plants, respectively. Our urbanization proxies did not point to an influence of this factor on local knowledge, but specialists living in a larger community with signs of internal urbanization processes had much less knowledge. Our results allowed us to visualize the importance of studying metacommunities as a whole, to verify complexities and intersections of overlapping factors. Studies in metacommunities open up a range of possibilities for ethnobiological analysis. Public Library of Science 2022-09-12 /pmc/articles/PMC9467323/ /pubmed/36094933 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274481 Text en © 2022 Santoro et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Santoro, Flávia Rosa
Richeri, Marina
Ladio, Ana Haydée
Factors affecting local plant knowledge in isolated communities from Patagonian steppe: Metacommunity theory is revealed as a methodological approach
title Factors affecting local plant knowledge in isolated communities from Patagonian steppe: Metacommunity theory is revealed as a methodological approach
title_full Factors affecting local plant knowledge in isolated communities from Patagonian steppe: Metacommunity theory is revealed as a methodological approach
title_fullStr Factors affecting local plant knowledge in isolated communities from Patagonian steppe: Metacommunity theory is revealed as a methodological approach
title_full_unstemmed Factors affecting local plant knowledge in isolated communities from Patagonian steppe: Metacommunity theory is revealed as a methodological approach
title_short Factors affecting local plant knowledge in isolated communities from Patagonian steppe: Metacommunity theory is revealed as a methodological approach
title_sort factors affecting local plant knowledge in isolated communities from patagonian steppe: metacommunity theory is revealed as a methodological approach
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9467323/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36094933
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274481
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