The response of geophytes to continuous human foraging on the Cape south coast, South Africa and its implications for early hunter-gatherer mobility patterns.
PeerJ
; 10: e13066, 2022.
Article
en En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-35529488
ABSTRACT
Current ecological understanding of plants with underground storage organs (USOs) suggests they have, in general, low rates of recruitment and thus as a resource it should be rapidly exhausted, which likely had implications for hunter-gatherer mobility patterns. We focus on the resilience (defined here as the ability of species to persist after being harvested) of USOs to human foraging. Human foragers harvested all visible USO material from 19 plots spread across six Cape south coast (South Africa) vegetation types for three consecutive years (2015-2017) during the period of peak USO apparency (September-October). We expected the plots to be depleted after the first year of harvesting since the entire storage organ of the USO is removed during foraging, i.e. immediate and substantial declines from the first to the second harvest. However, over 50% of the total weight harvested in 2015 was harvested in 2016 and 2017; only after two consecutive years of harvesting, was there evidence of significantly lower yield (p = 0.034) than the first (2015) harvest. Novel emergence of new species and new individuals in year two and three buffered the decline of harvested USOs. We use our findings to make predictions on hunter-gatherer mobility patterns in this region compared to the Hadza in East Africa and the Alyawara in North Australia.
Palabras clave
Texto completo:
1
Colección:
01-internacional
Base de datos:
MEDLINE
Asunto principal:
Plantas
Tipo de estudio:
Prognostic_studies
Límite:
Humans
País/Región como asunto:
Africa
/
Oceania
Idioma:
En
Revista:
PeerJ
Año:
2022
Tipo del documento:
Article
País de afiliación:
Sudáfrica