Flávia Rosa Santoro

Does plant species richness guarantee the resilience of local medical systems? A perspective from utilitarian redundancy.

Resilience is related to the ability of a system to adjust to disturbances. The Utilitarian Redundancy Model has emerged as a tool for investigating the resilience of local medical systems. The model determines the use of species richness for the same therapeutic function as a facilitator of the maintenance of these systems. However, predictions generated from this model have not yet been tested, and a lack of variables exists for deeper analyses of resilience. This study aims to address gaps in the Utilitarian Redundancy Model and to investigate the resilience of two medical systems in the Brazilian semi-arid zone. As a local illness is not always perceived in the same way that biomedicine recognizes, the term “therapeutic targets” is used for perceived illnesses. Semi-structured interviews with local experts were conducted using the free-listing technique to collect data on known medicinal plants, usage preferences, use of redundant species, characteristics of therapeutic targets, and the perceived severity for each target. Additionally, participatory workshops were conducted to determine the frequency of targets. The medical systems showed high species richness but low levels of species redundancy. However, if redundancy was present, it was the primary factor responsible for the maintenance of system functions. Species richness was positively associated with therapeutic target frequencies and negatively related to target severity. Moreover, information about redundant species seems to be largely idiosyncratic; this finding raises questions about the importance of redundancy for resilience. We stress the Utilitarian Redundancy Model as an interesting tool to be used in studies of resilience, but we emphasize that it must consider the distribution of redundancy in terms of the treatment of important illnesses and the sharing of information. This study has identified aspects of the higher and lower vulnerabilities of medical systems, adding variables that should be considered along with richness and redundancy.

Utilitarian Redundancy: Conceptualization and Potential Applications in Ethnobiological Research

The utilitarian redundancy model (URM) enables a simple and objective evaluation of the functionality of knowledge systems based on species known to perform similar functions. It emerges from the redundancy model in ecology that analyzes, from a functional perspective, the use of natural resources by human populations. The model includes three basic assumptions. The first is that several species exist with the same function (redundancy), which leads to a shared use pressure among these similar species. Second, locally preferred species experience higher use pressure even if their function is redundant, and third, functional redundancy provides flexibility to cope with disturbances caused by local species loss and positively contributes to the resilience of social-ecological systems. The applicability of this model is explained in this chapter, primarily through examples of local medical systems, and its applicability to studies focusing on the resilience of traditional ecological knowledge systems is detailed.

Urbanization, Modernization, and Nature Knowledge

The process of urbanization and modernization has led to a growing approximation between local populations and urban environments. An important question in ethnobiology is to understand the effects that this process can exert on the knowledge of human groups regarding environmental resources. In this chapter, we discuss the effects of urbanization and modernization in local ecological knowledge, and we take the use of medicinal plants in local medical systems as an example to discuss the issue. Here, as well, we show evidence from studies demonstrating that urbanization processes negatively affect the knowledge of medicinal plants as well as the evidence to suggest that a negative effect on knowledge does not necessarily occur. In addition, we note certain mechanisms that are associated with the influence of urbanization on the knowledge of medicinal plants.

Niche Construction Theory and Ethnobiology

The focus of ethnobiological research is to understand the interactions between people and biota. Here we suggest that niche construction theory can provide an important “theoretical framework” for understanding these interactions from different perspectives. Niche construction is a process by which living beings, including humans, modify their own niches or those of other organisms through their activities and decisions. By altering their niches, organisms can also alter the natural selective pressures. In this chapter, we sought to explore the niche construction theory and its key concepts. We also sought to show how niche construction theory can illustrate the biological and cultural impacts of human populations on the environment and on its own species and how ethnobiology can benefit from this theory. Niche construction theory can serve as an integrating concept for different ethnobiological approaches.

Resilience and Adaptation in Social-Ecological Systems

Social-ecological systems are open and dynamic systems. A major challenge in ethnobiological research involves understanding how social-ecological systems maintain their functions and processes upon facing disturbances over time. In this chapter, we present the concepts of resilience and adaptation, aiming to provide a scenario for ethnobiological studies that seek to investigate how social-ecological systems respond to disturbances. Moreover, we provide some examples of ethnobiological studies that sought to understand the resilience of social-ecological systems.

Insularity and citation behavior of scientific articles in young fields: the case of ethnobiology

We investigated some factors that can affect the citation behavior in young scientific fields by using ethnobiology as a research model. In particular, we sought to assess the degree of insularity in the citations of scientific articles and whether this behavior varies across countries, continents and related areas of knowledge. In addition, we analyzed if researchers cite more scientific articles or gray literature in their publications and whether there is variation in this behavior among different continents and areas of knowledge. We also assessed citation behavior considering open and closed access journals. Scientific articles from four journals that relate to ethnobiology were selected; two are open access journals, and two are closed access journals. Overall, we found a general lack of insularity, but the analysis by country revealed the existence of this phenomenon in Brazil, the United States, India, Mexico, Spain and Turkey. Contrary to what the scientometric literature indicates, the scientific articles that were published in closed access journals are cited more often than the scientific articles that were published in open access journals. This citation behavior may relate to the better establishment of this type of journal in the ethnobiology field, which also had articles with a lower citation rate of gray literature.

Evolutionary ethnobiology and cultural evolution: opportunities for research and dialog

The interest in theoretical frameworks that improve our understanding of social-ecological systems is growing within the field of ethnobiology. Several evolutionary questions may underlie the relationships between people and the natural resources that are investigated in this field. A new branch of research, known as evolutionary ethnobiology (EE), focuses on these questions and has recently been formally conceptualized. The field of cultural evolution (CE) has significantly contributed to the development of this new field, and it has introduced the Darwinian concepts of variation, competition, and heredity to studies that focus on the dynamics of local knowledge. In this article, we introduce CE as an important theoretical framework for evolutionary ethnobiological research. We present the basic concepts and assumptions of CE, along with the adjustments that are necessary for its application in EE. We discuss different ethnobiological studies in the context of this new framework and the new opportunities for research that exist in this area. We also propose a dialog that includes our findings in the context of cultural evolution.

Testing an Ethnobiological Evolutionary Hypothesis on Plant-Based Remedies to Treat Malaria in Africa

The malaria hypothesis, which addresses a strong selective pressure on human genes resulting from a chain of processes that originated with the practice of agriculture, is an example of an evolutionary consequence of niche construction. This scenario has led us to formulate the following questions: Are the genetic adaptations of populations with a history of contact with malaria reflected in the local medical systems? Likewise, could environmental changes (deforestation) and the incidence of malaria result in an adaptive response in these local health care systems? We collected secondary data for the entire African continent from different databases and secondary sources and measured the response of health care systems as the variation in the richness of antimalarial medicinal plants. Our results did not indicate a cause-and-effect relationship between the tested variables and the medical systems, but a subsequent analysis of variance showed an increase in the mean of medicinal plants in regions with a higher incidence of malaria prior to disease control measures. We suggest that this response had a greater impact on local medical knowledge than other variables, such as genetic frequency and deforestation.