The Perception of Availability Explains the Use Value of Plants: Investigating the Ecological Apparency Hypothesis

The ecological apparency hypothesis tests how humans select plants. It is important to distinguish whether an “apparent” plant is the ecologically dominant species or simply the one perceived as most available by people. Additionally, plants’ evolutionary history influences their prevalence and huma...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Economic botany 2024-09, Vol.78 (3), p.242-257
Main Authors: Sousa, Thiago Braz Barbosa, Ferreira-Júnior, Washington Soares, Gonçalves-Souza, Thiago, Ramos, Marcelo Alves
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
ancestry
Availability
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Dominant species
Ethnobiology
forests
Habitat fragmentation
humans
Hypotheses
Life Sciences
Original Article
Parameter estimation
people
Perception
Perceptions
Phylogenetics
Phylogeny
phytosociology
Plant Anatomy/Development
Plant Ecology
Plant layout
Plant Physiology
Plant Sciences
Plant Systematics/Taxonomy/Biogeography
Resource availability
species
surveys
woody plants
Citations: Items that this one cites
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The ecological apparency hypothesis tests how humans select plants. It is important to distinguish whether an “apparent” plant is the ecologically dominant species or simply the one perceived as most available by people. Additionally, plants’ evolutionary history influences their prevalence and human preference, based on shared traits and common ancestors. Thus, considering evolutionary history can tease apart factors that drive the use of plants by humans. Here, we investigated whether the perceived availability of plants is a better predictor of their use value than phytosociological parameters. We estimated rural farmers’ perception of the availability of the most important woody species locally and carried out a phytosociological survey in the surrounding forest fragments. We incorporated the phylogenetic relationships among useful species to shed light on the potential effect of plant shared ancestry on the use value. We observed that the availability perception of resources is more crucial in predicting the use value of species than their ecological availability, even when accounting for phylogenetic relatedness. Our findings suggest that use value in ethnobiology is closely linked to perceived resource availability, and it may impact our comprehension of the ecological apparency hypothesis.
ISSN:0013-0001
1874-9364
DOI:10.1007/s12231-024-09609-x