Taxonomic affiliation influences the selection of medicinal plants among people from semi-arid and humid regions-a proposition for the evaluation of utilitarian equivalence in Northeast Brazil.

ABSTRACT:

Background

This study sought to investigate the occurrence of taxonomic patterns between semi-arid and humid regions, verifying how the taxonomic affiliation can influence the selection of plants for medicinal purposes and act as a selection criterion.

Methods

The relationship between the taxonomic affiliation and the selection of medicinal plants with four different communities was analyzed; two of them associated with a seasonally dry tropical forest and the other two associated with a tropical rain forest. We used the Utilitarian Equivalence Model (transposing the concept of ecological equivalence, proposed by Odum, for ethnobotany) to test the hypothesis that species that have the same taxonomic affiliation tend to have the same therapeutic applications in different envi

SUBMITTER: Reinaldo R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7413083 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature