Sociocultural and ecological factors influencing management of edible and non-edible plants: the case of Ixcatlán, Mexico.

BACKGROUND: Identifying factors influencing plant management allows understanding how processes of domestication operate. Uncertain availability of resources is a main motivation for managing edible plants, but little is known about management motives of non-edible resources like medicinal and ceremonial plants. We hypothesized that uncertain availability of resources would be a general factor motivating their management, but other motives could operate simultaneously. Uncertainty and risk might be less important motives in medicinal than in edible plants, while for ceremonial plants, symbolic and spiritual values would be more relevant. METHODS: We inventoried edible, medicinal, and ceremonial plants in Ixcatlán, Oaxaca, Mexico, and conducted in-depth studies with 20 native and naturalized species per use type; we documented their cultural importance and abundance by interviewing 25 households and sampling vegetation in 33 sites. Consumption amounts and preferences were studied through surveys and free listings with 38 interviewees. Management intensity and risk indexes were calculated through PCA and their relation analyzed through regression analyses. Canonical methods allowed identifying the main sociocultural and ecological factors influencing management of plants per use type. RESULTS: Nearly 64, 63, and 55% of all ceremonial, edible, and medicinal wild plants recorded, respectively, are managed in order to maintain or increase their availability, embellishing environments, and because of ethical reasons and curiosity. Management intensity was higher in edible plants under human selection and associated with risk. Management of ceremonial and medicinal plants was not associated with indexes of risk or uncertainty in their availability. Other sociocultural and ecological factors influence management intensity, the most important being reciprocal relations and abundance perception. CONCLUSIONS: Plant management through practices and collectively regulated strategies is strongly related to control of risk and uncertainty in edible plants, compared with medicinal and ceremonial plants, in which reciprocal interchanges, curiosity, and spiritual values are more important factors. Understanding how needs, worries, social relations, and ethical values influence management decisions is important to understand processes of constructing management strategies and how domestication could be started in the past and are operated at the present.

Ixcatec ethnoecology: plant management and biocultural heritage in Oaxaca, Mexico.

BACKGROUND: Studying motives of plant management allows understanding processes that originated agriculture and current forms of traditional technology innovation. Our work analyses the role of native plants in the Ixcatec subsistence, management practices, native plants biocultural importance, and motivations influencing management decisions. Cultural and ecological importance and management complexity may differ among species according with their use value and availability. We hypothesized that decreasing risk in availability of resources underlies the main motives of management, but curiosity, aesthetic, and ethical values may also be determinant. METHODS: Role of plants in subsistence strategies, forms of use and management was documented through 130 semi-structured interviews and participant observation. Free listing interviews to 38 people were used to estimate the cognitive importance of species used as food, medicine, fuel, fodder, ornament and ceremonial. Species ecological importance was evaluated through sampling vegetation in 22 points. Principal Components Analysis were performed to explore the relation between management, cultural and ecological importance and estimating the biocultural importance of native species. RESULTS: We recorded 627 useful plant species, 589 of them native. Livelihood strategies of households rely on agriculture, livestock and multiple use of forest resources. At least 400 species are managed, some of them involving artificial selection. Management complexity is the main factor reflecting the biocultural importance of plant species, and the weight of ecological importance and cultural value varied among use types. Management strategies aim to ensure resources availability, to have them closer, to embellish human spaces or satisfying ethical principles. CONCLUSION: Decisions about plants management are influenced by perception of risk to satisfy material needs, but immaterial principles are also important. Studying such relation is crucial for understanding past and present technological innovation processes and understand the complex process of developing biocultural legacy.