Human adaptation to biodiversity change: An adaptation process approach applied to a case study from southern India.

Adaptation to environmental change, including biodiversity change, is both a new imperative in the face of global climate change and the oldest problem in human history. Humans have evolved a wide range of adaptation strategies in response to localised environmental changes, which have contributed strongly to both biological and cultural diversity. The evolving set of locally driven, 'bottom-up' responses to environmental change is collectively termed 'autonomous adaptation,' while its obverse, 'planned adaptation,' refers to 'top-down' (from without, e.

Recommended standards for conducting and reporting ethnopharmacological field studies.

Ethnopharmacological Relevance: What are the minimum methodological and conceptual requirements for an ethnopharmacological field study? How can the results of ethnopharmacological field studies be reported so that researchers with different backgrounds can draw on the results and develop new research questions and projects? And how should these field data be presented to get accepted in a scientific journal such as the Journal of Ethnopharmacology? The objective of this commentary is to create a reference that covers the basic standards necessary during planning, conducting and reporting of field research.

Materials And Methods: We focus on conducting and reporting ethnopharmacological field studies on medicinal plants or materia medica and associated knowledge of a specific people or region. The article highlights the most frequent problems and pitfalls, and draws on published literature, fieldwork experience, and extensive insights from peer-review of field studies.

Treating infants with frigg: linking disease aetiologies, medicinal plant use and care-seeking behaviour in southern Morocco.

Background: Although most Moroccans rely to some extent on traditional medicine, the practice of frigg to treat paediatric ailments by elderly women traditional healers known as ferraggat, has not yet been documented. We describe the role of these specialist healers, document the medicinal plants they use, and evaluate how and why their practice is changing.

Methods: Ethnomedicinal and ethnobotanical data were collected using semi-structured interviews and observations of medical encounters.

Comprehensive dataset of the medicinal plants used by a Tashelhit speaking community in the High Atlas, Morocco.

This dataset describes medicinal plants used in a poorly studied area of Morocco: the High Atlas mountains, inhabited by Ishelhin people, the southern Moroccan Amazigh (Berber) ethnic group, "An ethnomedicinal survey of a Tashelhit-speaking community in the High Atlas, Morocco" (Teixidor-Toneu et al., 2016) [1]. It includes a comprehensive list of the plants used in the commune, as well as details on the plant voucher specimens collected and a glossary of Tashelhit terminology relevant to the study.

An ethnomedicinal survey of a Tashelhit-speaking community in the High Atlas, Morocco.

Ethnopharmacological Relevance: Traditional knowledge about medicinal plants from a poorly studied region, the High Atlas in Morocco, is reported here for the first time; this permits consideration of efficacy and safety of current practises whilst highlighting species previously not known to have traditional medicinal use.

Aim Of The Study: Our study aims to document local medicinal plant knowledge among Tashelhit speaking communities through ethnobotanical survey, identifying preferred species and new medicinal plant citations and illuminating the relationship between emic and etic ailment classifications.

Materials And Methods: Ethnobotanical data were collected using standard methods and with prior informed consent obtained before all interactions, data were characterized using descriptive indices and medicinal plants and healing strategies relevant to local livelihoods were identified.

Foodways in transition: food plants, diet and local perceptions of change in a Costa Rican Ngäbe community.

Background: Indigenous populations are undergoing rapid ethnobiological, nutritional and socioeconomic transitions while being increasingly integrated into modernizing societies. To better understand the dynamics of these transitions, this article aims to characterize the cultural domain of food plants and analyze its relation with current day diets, and the local perceptions of changes given amongst the Ngäbe people of Southern Conte-Burica, Costa Rica, as production of food plants by its residents is hypothesized to be drastically in recession with an decreased local production in the area and new conservation and development paradigms being implemented.

Methods: Extensive freelisting, interviews and workshops were used to collect the data from 72 participants on their knowledge of food plants, their current dietary practices and their perceptions of change in local foodways, while cultural domain analysis, descriptive statistical analyses and development of fundamental explanatory themes were employed to analyze the data.

Recognizing local people's priorities for tropical forest biodiversity.

Tropical forest people often suffer from the same processes that threaten biodiversity. An improved knowledge of what is important to local people could improve decision making. This article examines the usefulness of explicitly asking what is important to local people.