Quilombola perceptions about plant-mediated ecological interactions

Abstract

Background: Networks are useful tools to show ecological interactions because they allow to virtually represent natural structures. When applied to local knowledge this approach can reveal unnoticed perspectives, going beyond the species known and used, and showing the interdependence among them. We aim to investigate the ecological interactions between plants-and-animals and plantsand-plants perceived by people from three Quilombola groups in Southern Brazil. We also discuss how the proximity to urban areas can influence these perceptions.Methods: Through 141 ethnobotany interviews in three communities, we asked about the plants known and how each plant interacts with other plants and with animals. Results:The networks formed were similar in the three communities and had characteristics of freescale networks. The main interactions perceived were between cultivated plants, and between plants and native animals, and were especially related to competition, facilitation, inquilinism, and herbivory. Manihot esculenta, Citrus sinensis, Psidium guajava, and Zea mays were species with the highest centrality. Ecological interactions among different species, especially the native ones, were more prone to occur in less urbanized areas, due to proximity to forested sites. Conclusions:The refined understanding of ecological interactions amidst traditional people reinforces the importance to preserve and maintain their knowledge beyond the simple species' records, to assist traditional people to guide their claims to establish their rights.

Traditional Agriculture and Food Sovereignty: Quilombola Knowledge and Management of Food Crops

“…The relationships between elements in these systems can be understood as an infinite network of connections, and the development of graph theory helps to reveal the invisible structures created by social relations through metrics developed to characterize and compare structures, and analyze the positions of each individual in a given network, and to understand the system as a whole (Barabási 2016; Mello 2010). There has been a growing use of graph theory in ethnobotanical studies, given the possibilities of this analytical tool to simplify the understanding of these complex ecological interactions (Calvet-Mir et al 2012; Cavechia et al 2014; Díaz-Reviriego et al 2016; Heineberg and Hanazaki 2019; Reyes-García et al 2013; Valadares et al 2020; Zank and Hanazaki 2016). Our objective was to understand the distribution of agrobiodiversity among farmers in a RQC and to investigate its relationship with food security at the family level.…”