Abstract. Structure, composition, and functions of homegardens are said to be closely related to the social structure of households, but this issue is not often researched. An analysis of the literature on swidden and homegardens in Latin America shows that such interrelationships become transparent when examining the gender division of labor, gendered access to garden resources including land, trees, and other plants, and gendered control over subsistence and cash crops and income derived from them. Social status related to gardening, gendered knowledge distribution and transmission, and social dynamics leading to change in gardening and gardens are also important parameters in this matrix. A review of 39 Latin American case studies dealing with swidden or homegardens revealed that women are by far the prominent garden managers across its sub-regions. Aside from the multiple material benefits provided by gardens, other drivers that tend to ensure that women will strive to maintain them include their emotional and spiritual values and the positive social status that productive and beautiful gardens confer. Homegardening is a 'respectable' way for women to contribute to subsistence production and manifest specialized knowledge and skills without competing with men. However, commercialization may be undermining both women's control and the benefits they derive from homegardening as well as the complex structure and function of homegardens.

ABSTRACT. Medicinal plants provide indigenous and peasant communities worldwide with means to meet their healthcare needs. Homegardens often act as medicine cabinets, providing easily accessible medicinal plants for household needs. Social structure and social exchanges have been proposed as factors influencing the species diversity that people maintain in their homegardens. Here, we assess the association between the exchange of medicinal knowledge and plant material and medicinal plant richness in homegardens. Using Tsimane' Amazonian homegardens as a case study, we explore whether social organization shapes exchanges of medicinal plant knowledge and medicinal plant material. We also use network centrality measures to evaluate people's location and performance in medicinal plant knowledge and plant material exchange networks. Our results suggest that social organization, specifically kinship and gender relations, influences medicinal plant exchange patterns significantly. Homegardens total and medicinal plant species richness are related to gardeners' centrality in the networks, whereby people with greater centrality maintain greater plant richness. Thus, together with agroecological conditions, social relations among gardeners and the culturally specific social structure seem to be important determinants of plant richness in homegardens. Understanding which factors pattern general species diversity in tropical homegardens, and medicinal plant diversity in particular, can help policy makers, health providers, and local communities to understand better how to promote and preserve medicinal plants in situ. Biocultural approaches that are also gender sensitive offer a culturally appropriate means to reduce the global and local loss of both biological and cultural diversity.

Debates around Common Property Resources and Intellectual Property Rights failto consider traditional and indigenous rights regimes that regulate plant resource exploitation, establish bundles of powers and obligations for heterogeneous groups of users, and create differential entitlements to benefits that are related to social structures.Such rights regimes are important to maintaining biodiversity and to human welfare; failing to recognize them presents dangers. The case study investigates the gendered nature of informal rights to selected tree and plant species that are distinct from, but related to, customary rights to land and trees, and are embedded in cosmology and social norms.

Traditional animal health practices are today only rarely used in Europe, as many natural remedies applied for the treatment of animals have been replaced by modern pharmaceuticals. Modern institutionalized veterinary services tend to cover every aspect of animal health care, and influence most of the veterinary practices carried out by shepherds and farmers. However, in some areas, particularly of the Mediterranean, such traditional practices persist. Few ethnoveterinary studies have been conducted in the Mediterranean. In this survey, we analysed the natural remedies that are still in use or were used until very recently to treat animals in central Lucania (inland southern Italy). Plants constitute the mainstay of the folk-veterinary regimen (about 40 preparations), but there are also a few animal- and mineral-derived preparations. Among them, the veterinary use of Cistus incanus, Colutea arborescens, Daphne laureola, and Erigeron acer is reported for the first time. Moreover, the study identified diverse traditional plant nutraceuticals used to improve animal health, as well as the quality of milk and dairy products. An important potential output of this study may be the development of eco-sustainable integrated projects focused on the maintenance of traditional animal breeding and healthcare systems. Pharmacological and toxicological considerations relating to possible applications of the recorded traditional knowledge in modern evidence-based veterinary medicine are also discussed.

Local medical systems are key elements of social-ecological systems as they provide culturally appropriate and locally accessible health care options, especially for populations with scarce access to biomedicine. The adaptive capacity of local medical systems generally rests on two pillars: species diversity and a robust local knowledge system, both threatened by local and global environmental change. We first present a conceptual framework to guide the assessment of knowledge diversity and redundancy in local medicinal knowledge systems through a gender lens. Then, we apply this conceptual framework to our research on the local medicinal plant knowledge of the Tsimane’ Amerindians. Our results suggest that Tsimane’ medicinal plant knowledge is gendered and that the frequency of reported ailments and the redundancy of knowledge used to treat them are positively associated. We discuss the implications of knowledge diversity and redundancy for local knowledge systems’ adaptive capacity, resilience, and health sovereignty.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s13280-016-0826-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.