RESEARCH ARTICLE Availability, diversification and versatility explain human selection of introduced plants in Ecuadorian traditional medicine G. Hart1*, Orou G. Gaoue1,2¤, LucõÂa de la Torre3, Hugo Navarrete4, Priscilla Muriel4, Manuel J. MacõÂa5, Henrik Balslev6, Susana LeoÂn-YaÂnez4, Peter Jørgensen7, David Cameron Duffy1,8 1 Department of Botany, University of Hawai`i at Mānoa, Honolulu, Hawai`i, United States of America, 2 Department of Geography, Environmental Management and Energy Studies, University of Johannesburg, a1111111111 APK Campus, Johannesburg, South Africa, 3 Herbario QCA, Pontificia Universidad CatoÂlica del Ecuador, a1111111111 Quito, Ecuador, 4 Escuela de BiologõÂa, Pontificia Universidad CatoÂlica del Ecuador, Quito, Ecuador, a1111111111 5 Departamento de BiologõÂa, AÂ rea de BoÂtanica, Universidad AutoÂnoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain, 6 Institut a1111111111 for Bioscience, Aarhus Universitet, Aarhus, Denmark, 7 Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, Missouri, a1111111111 United States of America, 8 Pacific Cooperative Studies Unit, University of Hawai`i at Mānoa, Honolulu, Hawai`i, United States of America ¤ Current address: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, United States of America *
[email protected] OPEN ACCESS Citation: Hart G, Gaoue OG, de la Torre L, Navarrete H, Muriel P, MacõÂa MJ, et al. (2017) Abstract Availability, diversification and versatility explain human selection of introduced plants in Ecuadorian Globally, a majority of people use plants as a primary source of healthcare and introduced traditional medicine. PLoS ONE 12(9): e0184369. plants are increasingly discussed as medicine. Protecting this resource for human health https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0184369 depends upon understanding which plants are used and how use patterns will change over Editor: Ulrich Melcher, Oklahoma State University, time.