Abstract
Plants have been used in Amazonian forests for millennia and some of these plants are disproportionally abundant (hyperdominant). At local scales, people generally use the most abundant plants, which may be abundant as the result of management of indigenous peoples and local communities. However, it is unknown whether plant use is also associated with abundance at larger scales. We used the population sizes of 4,454 arboreal species (trees and palms) estimated from 1946 forest plots and compiled information about uses from 29 Amazonian ethnobotany books and articles published between 1926 and 2013 to investigate the relationship between species usefulness and their population sizes, and how this relationship is influenced by the degree of domestication of arboreal species across Amazonia. We found that half of the arboreal species (2,253) are useful to humans, which represents 84% of the estimated individuals in Amazonian forests. Useful species have mean populations sizes six times larger than non-useful species, and their abundance is related with the probability of usefulness. Incipiently domesticated species are the most abundant. Population size was weakly related to specific uses, but strongly related with the multiplicity of uses. This study highlights the enormous usefulness of Amazonian arboreal species for local peoples. Our findings support the hypothesis that the most abundant plant species have a greater chance to be useful at both local and larger scales, and suggest that although people use the most abundant plants, indigenous people and local communities have contributed to plant abundance through long-term management.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | e0257875 |
| Pages (from-to) | 1-17 |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| Journal | PLoS ONE |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue number | 10 |
| Early online date | 1 Oct 2021 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Oct 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Funding:Thisworkwasfinancedinpartbythe Coordenac ¸ãodeAperfeic ¸oamentodePessoalde Nı ´vel Superior - Brasil (CAPES) - PROEX n. 0742/ 2020,bytheCoordenac¸ãodeAperfeic ¸oamentode Pessoal de Nı ´vel Superior-Brasil (CAPES)-FinanceCode001andbytheFundac ¸ãodeAmparo
Funding Information:
This work was financed in part by the Coordena??o de Aperfei?oamento de Pessoal de N?vel Superior - Brasil (CAPES) - PROEX n. 0742/ 2020, by the Coordena??o de Aperfei?oamento de Pessoal de N?vel Superior - Brasil (CAPES) - Finance Code 001 and by the Funda??o de Amparo ? Pesquisa do Estado do Amazonas (FAPEAM) - PAPAC n. 005/2019. S.D.C., C.L., A.P.A. and C.R.C. thank the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cient?fico e Tecnol?gico (CNPq) for a Master?s scholarship, two post-doctoral scholarships and a research fellowship, respectively. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Coelho et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Copyright:
Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.