Biogeographical Relationships and Diversity in the Peruvian Flora Reported by Hipólito Ruiz and José Pavón: Vegetation, Uses and Anthropology

SIMPLE SUMMARY: The expedition started by Hipólito Ruiz and José Pavón from Spain to the territories of Peru, Chile and Ecuador in the 18th century yielded a total of 6493 plants from Peru, of which 2327 were used in medicine, cosmetics, food or materials. Information was obtained from their published works, diaries, manuscripts and plant collection. Using a bioclimatic model, we present the types of vegetation from which these plants originate (from the coastal desert to the Amazonian forests), as well as the ethnic groups from which they might have come. Using statistical analyses, we were able to discover which vegetation types were the most explored and the areas from which the most commonly used plants originated. ABSTRACT: The Royal Spanish Botanical Expedition to the Viceroyalty of Peru in the 18th century was one of the most important European expeditions to American territories. Using the herbarium sheets of Ruiz and Pavón (Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid) and their edited works, manuscripts and expedition diaries, we have constructed a database of the collected and observed flora, which has served as the basis for a map containing all of the Peruvian localities of the expedition. Based on the method of bioclimatic belts and our own observations, we have deduced to which type of vegetation the flora studied in the expedition belongs. The uses of the flora per locality were studied, as well as the ethnic groups involved in the different localities. By using a Principal Component Analysis, we have obtained the distribution of the bioclimatic belts whose vegetation was the most explored. In order to observe the bioclimatic tendency of plant uses, a Detrended Correspondence Analysis (DCA) was conducted to identify the distribution of localities with the highest frequencies of plant uses. The expedition’s explorations focused on the most humid areas of the thermo- and mesotropical belts, from where a large number of plants with practical uses were obtained.