Ethnobotanical knowledge of two Indian communities in the Monte Desert: the role of age, time outside, and residence isolation

Background: The contributions of ethnobotany are essential for understanding the relationship of local communities with their environment and, therefore, for planning effective conservation and management measures. In this paper, we present the results of the first quantitative approach to the ethnobotany of Indian communities of the Santa María valley, a semiarid region in Tucumán province (Argentina) with marked signs of environmental degradation where people face harsh socioeconomic conditions. This study aimed to evaluate the relevance of a set of plant species for the local communities and to analyze the effects of predictor variables on local people’s knowledge about uses of plants. Methods: We conducted semi-structured ethnobotanical surveys inquiring about the uses of 41 plant species. We analyzed the relevance of each species following consensus and versatility criteria. We searched for patterns in individual knowledge and their relationship with gender, age, time of residence outside the valley, and residence isolation, through ordinations and generalized linear models. Results: We present a ranking of the species based on their Cultural Importance value. We found that age and residence isolation positively affect knowledge about plant uses, while time outside the valley has a negative effect. Conclusions: Given the socioeconomic transformations the region has gone through in recent decades, these results highlight the importance of preventing cultural erosion and the loss of its traditional ethnobotanical knowledge. Key words: plant uses, numerical ethnobotany, cultural importance, age, isolation