No abstract

A central argument in the research on traditional knowledge, which persists in the scientific literature, is that the entrance of exotic plants in local medical systems is directly associated with acculturation. However, this logic has put an end for a long period to efforts to understand why such species have so successfully entered socio-ecological systems or even their real role in such systems. This study provides evidence that (1) in some socio-environmental contexts, exotic medicinal species usually confer greater adaptive advantages to local populations, and (2) despite their general importance, exotic species only excel in medical systems when cost-benefit ratio is favorable to them. Thus, in order to avoid the loss of knowledge about native plants and to ensure biocultural conservation, it is necessary to create strategies to amplify the advantages of these species.

The ability to identify tastes associated with plant chemicals may have favored humans in identifying plant chemists with pharmacological activity throughout human evolutionary history. The genetic basis of taste perception influences people's varying sensitivity to perceive chemical stimuli of taste. This biological basis can play an important role in plant selection to compose local medical systems, given the argument in the ethnobiological literature that plant taste can influence their selection as a medicinal resource. Thus, we aimed to understand whether this biological basis influences on the selection of medicinal plants. Our investigation was made through the survey of ethnobiological data on the knowledge of medicinal plants and sensitivity data on the perception of bitter taste in two local communities. We tested whether local experts and active experimenters of medicinal plants are more sensitive to the perception of bitter taste than the rest of the population. Additionally, we evaluated whether this biological basis influences on the number of citations of plants with taste and on the versatility attributed to medicinal plants. Our assumptions were not corroborated by our results. It is likely that the bitter taste threshold is not relevant for the selection of medicinal plants.

No abstract

In epidemic and pandemic contexts, such as that of COVID-19, epidemiological changes are continuous, and many people do not have access to accurate, up-to-date information. In this context, social learning can be an advantageous survival strategy. We investigate whether people remember and communicate information attributed to someone prestigious more often than that attributed to family members, politicians, and people with experience in public health. The experimental phase will include a recall stage and an information transmission stage, which will be based on a fictitious text containing an opinion about a drug treatment for COVID-19. There will be four versions of the text, and each participant will be assigned one of these versions for the investigation. The participants will be instructed to read the fictional story and then complete a distraction exercise. Subsequently, a recall test will be performed, where they will be asked to recount the story as accurately as possible. The second stage of the experiment is aimed at testing the transmission of information where we will conduct a linear chain transmission experiment, where eight chains of four participants will be used for each story. They will be asked to write down their recollection of the material. This text will undergo spelling error correction and then be sent to the next participant in the chain through the platform. At the end of the experiment, there will be a self-reporting questionnaire for the participants; this allows for triangulation of the data.