1,721,013 research outputs found
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The evolution of medicinal floras: insights from Moroccan medicinal plant knowledge transmission
Full text linkWhy some plants are used medicinally, and others not, is not yet totally understood; intrinsic,
cultural and floristic factors may be important and their interactions are complex. Plants’
morphological, organoleptic and ecological traits have been evaluated elsewhere. This thesis
focuses on the role of cultural transmission of knowledge across generations, societies and floristic
environments. Using Morocco as a case study, this thesis describes medicinal plant use among
understudied Tashelhit speakers in the High Atlas and specialist healers called ferraggat. The role
of knowledge transmission is evaluated in a context of cultural change. Processes of transmission
are also inferred from patterns of medicinal plant use regionally; a checklist for Moroccan medicinal
plants is compiled and a new method based on biogeographic data is used to test a hypothesis
about the influence of the Arab knowledge due to historical migrations into Morocco.
Aspects of Ishelhin ethnobotanical knowledge are described through 254 vernacular plant names,
which reflect local livelihoods and biodiversity values; 151 vernacular names for medicinal plants
correspond to 159 botanical species and are found to treat 36 folk ailments. Men and women listed
significantly different medicinal plants; herbal medicine is a women’s domain characterized by low
specificity of herbal remedies and widespread use of mixtures. Medicinal plant use is guided by
local concepts of health and illness including supernatural aetiologies, which also determine
healthcare seeking behaviour. Belief in supernatural causes of illness and difficult access to
biomedicine result in preference for ferraggat to treat childrens’ ailments in the High Atlas by a
practice called frigg. Seventy plants were documented for this treatment, but emphasis on plants
may be a recent substitute for remedies that used primarily wool and blood two generations ago.
This is a shift in the objects of cultural meaningfulness in response to the increasing influence of
orthodox Islam and state-sponsored modernisation, including public healthcare and schooling.
Transmission of knowledge is underpinned by the prestige and legitimacy of alternative remedies
and healing systems, which shift during socioeconomic and religious change. With biomedicine
available, herbal remedies may not be preferred treatments, unless local explanatory models of
illness are maintained. Meta-analysis of the Moroccan medicinal flora supports this view. Although
I hypothesised that Saharo-Arabian plants would be overrepresented in the Moroccan medicinal
flora, overrepresentation was not significant. Nonetheless, Arabic influence is evidenced through
the Moroccan syncretic health system. The combination of pattern and process observation in the
field and from macroscale analysis contributes to the understanding of how knowledge
transmission shapes medicinal floras
La cueillette durable, un exemple de contribution réciproque entre les humains et la nature
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La cueillette durable, un exemple de contribution réciproque entre les humains et la nature
No full textSustainable foraging of wild edible plants in Norway : a biocultural approach
Full text linkGlobally, the role of wild edible plants (WEPs) in providing culturally appropriate nutrition and food security, added economic value, and ecological benefits, is now well recognized. In Europe, the use of WEPs appears both as an ancient and on-going subsistence activity, but also as an emerging trend in high-end gastronomy and luxury foods. Yet, WEPs remain underutilized and mostly neglected, and the conservation of knowledge systems and practices associated to them is threatened. It is also unknown if there are any threats on the plant populations through harvesting. In Norway, overharvesting of some wild edible species has been observed recently around urban centres. Although research has been conducted on the documentation of traditional knowledge associated to WEPs, little is known about how new foraging practices affect biological diversity. The purpose of this study was to investigate if and when foraging activities in Norway can be unsustainable and what foraging practices may threaten plant communities. Different socio-cultural constructs around WEP harvesting were analysed, notably comparing chefs and professional foragers with amateurs. In collaboration with the Norwegian Association for Mycology and Foraging, ethnographic methods were used and 19 key stakeholders were interviewed within the Norwegian foraging community including foragers, chefs, association leaders, and conservation experts. Ethnobotanical data was collected through an online questionnaire (219 responses mainly from amateur foragers), and combined with available information on species’ ecology and their conservation status to assess foraging impact on WEPs. Results show that foraging WEPs in Norway poses no immediate threat to plant conservation, yet risks exist. These are discussed in the context of developing local guidelines for the sustainable use of WEPs in Norway in a participatory manner
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Comparative phylogenetic methods and the cultural evolution of medicinal plant use
Full text linkHuman life depends on plant biodiversity and the ways in which plants are used are culturally determined. Whilst anthropologists have used phylogenetic comparative methods (PCMs) to gain an increasingly sophisticated understanding of the evolution of political, religious, social, and material culture, plant use has been almost entirely neglected. Medicinal plants are of special interest because of their role in maintaining people’s health across the world. PCMs in particular, and cultural evolutionary theory in general, provide a framework in which to study the diversity of medicinal plant applications cross-culturally, and to infer changes in plant use through time. These methods can be applied to single medicinal plants as well as the entire set of plants used by a culture for medicine, and they account for the non-independence of data when testing for floristic, cultural or other drivers of plant use. With cultural, biological, and linguistic diversity under threat, gaining a deeper and broader understanding of the variation of medicinal plant use through time and space is pressing
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Sweetness and Loss: An Urgent Call for Affiliative Modes of Living
No full textFraming the tales, textures, and under- standings of sweetness found within this special issue took time, thought, and seek- ing. These studies speak to how intensely meaningful sweetness is to people and how hard it is to inhabit a world perceived to be without it. Our goal with this introduction is to create a medium appropriately inspir- ited with the meaningful and dynamic content of these studies so they can take flight with sureness and integrity. There were challenges to arriving at our goal. For starters, the contributions as a collec- tion resonate with rather grand issues, including mass homogenization, disap- pearing foodways, diet-related disease, enduring cultural memory, the cultural meanings of taste and senses, and more. Permeating nearly all of the content herein is a deeply affective, dare we say sappy, theme speaking to the erosion of tradition, the relegation of charismatic experiences to the past, the disenchantment of the ecosphere, and the foods which sustain us. And yet, all these pieces finish with a hopeful note: the value of traditional foods being recognized at the last minute, nearly abandoned flavors making their way into innovative cuisine, or the enduring appre- ciation of original, unadulterated recipes. Another, more looming, challenge is the pressurized historical moment we now live in. It is just simply not a time when sweetness—in the beloved and nourishing interpersonal, visionary, and culinary forms captured in this issue—is being given its due. The importance of crafting this issue at this time into a message of broad soci- etal relevance is, therefore, plain. In the way of the inter-discipline of ethnobiology, what follows is a frame we hope is capa- ble of displaying the enduring pricelessness of biocultural diversity today, in this case, drawing on the lovely, tender, fulfilling, and pervasive nature of sweetness
Inorganic nutrient concentrations of the expedition Malaspina 2010 (Malaspina_2010_Nutrients.xlsx) [Dataset]
No full textDescription: The Malaspina2010_chlorophyll.xlsx file contains the inorganic nutrient concentration data of the circunnavigation expedition Malaspina 2010, which took place between 14/12/2010 and 14/07/2011 on board the BIO Hespérides. The date and position of the sampling stations are listed in the “Data” sheet of the file.
Methods: Water samples for measurement of the concentration of nitrate, nitrite (nitrate + nitrite in leg 1), phosphate and silicate were collected from 3 m depth with a 30-liter Niskin bottle and from selected depths between 10 and 200 m with a Rosette of 24 10-liter Niskin bottles attached to a CTD probe. Inorganic nutrient concentrations were determined by means of a Skalar autoanalyzer, following the standard spectrophotometric procedures described in Grasshoff et al. (1999) and Blasco et al. (2012); in leg 1, nitrite was not determined separately and phosphate was measured using a manual method (Vidal et al. 2012)This work was supported by Consolider-Ingenio 2010, CSD2008-00077 of the former Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (ES) (now www.ciencia.gob.es) and the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) (ES)Peer reviewe
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