The Useful Plants of Tambopata, Peru: I. Statistical Hypotheses Tests with a New Quantitative Technique Author(s): Oliver Phillips and Alwyn H. Gentry Source: Economic Botany, Vol. 47, No. 1 (Jan. - Mar., 1993), pp. 15-32 Published by: Springer on behalf of New York Botanical Garden Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4255479 Accessed: 07/10/2009 08:24 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=nybg. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Springer and New York Botanical Garden Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Economic Botany. http://www.jstor.org THE USEFUL PLANTS OF TAMBOPATA, PERU: I. STATISTICAL HYPOTHESES TESTS WITH A NEW QUANTITATIVE TECHNIQUE1 OLIVER PHILLIPS AND ALWYN H. GENTRY Phillips, Oliver(Department of Biology, WashingtonUniversity, One Brooking'sDrive, Campus Box 1137, St. Louis, MO 63130-4899, U.S.A.), and Alwyn H. Gentry (MissouriBotanical Garden,Box 299, St. Louis, MO 63166-0299, U.S.A.).THE USEFULPLANIS OF TAMBOPATA, PERU: I. STATISTICAL HYPOTHESES TESTS WITH A NEW QUANTITATIVE TECHNIQUE. Economic Botany 47(1):15-32. 1993. This paper describes a new, simple, quantitativetechnique for evaluatingthe relative usefulnessof plants to people. The techniqueis then comparedto the quantitativeapproaches in ethnobotanythat have been developedrecently. Our technique is used to calculatethe importanceof over600 speciesof woodyplants to non-indigenousmestizo people in Tambopata,Amazonian Peru. Two general classes of hypothesesare formulated and tested statistically,concerning (1) the relativeimportance of differentspecies, and (2) the importance of differentfamilies. The plantfamilies are comparedwith respectto all uses, and with respect tofive broadgroups of uses. Palms, Annonaceae,and Lauraceaewere found to be the most useful woodyplant families. On average,the 20 largest woodyplant families are most importantto mestizosfor subsistenceconstruction materials, followed in descendingorder by commercial, edible, technological,and medicinaluses. Las plantas uitiles de Tambopata, Perui:I. Pruebas estadisticas de hip6tesis etnobotanicas con una nueva tecnica cuantitativa.En este estudiose describeuna nuevatecnica cuantitativa para la evaluaci6nde la relativautilidad de plantas a la gente. Esta tecnicase comparacon aquellas tecnicas cuantitativasrecientemente desarrolladas en etnobotdnica.Con esta tecnica nosotros estimamosla importanciaque las plantas lenosas, mds de 600 especies,tienen para los mestizos de Tambopatade la Amazonia del Peru. Estadfsticamente,se pruebandos hip6tesisgenerales concernientesa (1) la relativa importanciade especies diferentes,y a (2) la importanciade diferentesfamilias. Las familias de plantas son comparadasentre ellas en relaci6na todos los usos, y con respectoa cinco gruposamplios de usos. Se descubri6que lasfamilias lenosas mas utiles son las palmeras,Annonaceas, y Lauraceas.En terminopromedio, las 20 familias mas grandes de plantas lenosas tienen prioridadcomo materialesde construcci6nde subsistencia, seguidasen ordendescendiente por sus usoscomerciales, comestibles, tecnol6gicos, y medicinales. Key Words: quantitative ethnobotany; hypothesis tests; statistics; Tambopata, Peru; mestizo. The fate of tropical forests and indigenous peo- nobotany has had several causes. The science is ples have recently attracted considerable popular intrinsically interdisciplinary, making it suscep- interest. Yet, paradoxically, the pace of research tible to charges of being vague and imprecise, into the indigenous plant uses and vegetation and ethnobiologists study and learn from cul- management processes that could offer alterna- tures that western science and biomedicine hold tives to the destruction is dwarfed by accelerating to be "primitive" and inferior. However, some rates of cultural and biological extinction. In spite criticism of the methods and philosophical ap- of ethnobotany's relatively high public profile, proach of ethnobotany has certainly been justi- few institutions apparently see it as a real science fiable. As several others have pointed out there worthy of significant financial support. is a lack of methodological rigor in much eth- Historically, this negative perception of eth- nobotanical research (cf. Johns, Kokwaro, and Kimanani 1990; Trotter and Logan 1986), and a frequent unwillingness to define falsifiable hy- I Received 15 June 1992;accepted 13 October1992. potheses. Economic Botany 47(1) pp. 15-32. 1993 ? 1993, by The New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, NY 10458 U.S.A. 16 ECONOMICBOTANY [VOL. 47 Partly in response to the long-standing per- the way ethnobotany is done, but it will also ception of ethnobotany as not being "scientific," enhance the image of ethnobotany among other there is now a strong movement to modify the scientists. traditional compilation-style approaches to eth- It is possible to draw a close analogy between nobotany, by developing methods that allow re- the hypothesis-testing aims of quantitative eth- searchers to quantitatively describe and analyze nobotany as outlined here, and the recent trend patterns in what they study (Prance 1991; Elvin- in systematics towards a more scientific meth- Lewis and Lewis n.d.). Quantitative and even odology. This was mainly triggered by the ap- statistical hypotheses-testing techniques have re- plication of cladistic methodology to plant sys- cently been applied to, inter alia, the following tematics, which has forced taxonomists to questions: (1) evaluating the importance of veg- reevaluate some of their assumptions about the etation to one ethnic group (e.g., Prance et al. nature of the characters they use and the way in 1987; Unruh and Alcorn 1988; Anderson and which they use them (e.g., Wiley 1981; Gilmartin Posey 1989; Balee and Gely 1989); (2) comparing 1986; Sneath 1988; Stevens 1991). The tradi- the uses of, (a) hectare forest plots (Prance et al. tional role of taxonomists as describers and com- 1987), and (b) entire or partial regional floras pilers has now largely been superseded by a mod- (Toledo et al. 1992; Bye n.d.), by different ethnic em systematics in which the construction of groups; (3) comparing the importance of different phylogenies, using "refutation by experimenta- vegetation types to one people (Boom 1990; An- tion" as a fundamental philosophical principle, derson 1990, 1991; Salick 1992); establishing the occupies a central position. We believe that relative importance of different (4) medicinal quantification, and the associated explicit hy- plant species (e.g., Adu-Tutu et al. 1979; Elvin- pothesis-testing approach, can have similar ben- Lewis et al. 1980; Friedman et al. 1986; Johns, eficial effects in ethnobotany. By attracting sci- Kokwaro, and Kimanani 1990; Trotter and Lo- entific respect, and hence more students and gan 1986) and (5) families (Moerman 1979, 1991; research funding, these approaches can help to But, Hu, and Cheung Kong 1980; Kapur et al. generate sufficient high quality information to 1992); (6) comparing the importance of different impact on conservation and development issues. plant families and uses among plants sold in a In this paper we (1) develop a simple technique peasant marketplace (Martin 1992); and (7) test- of analyzing ethnobotanical data, and (2) com- ing a model of the origins of medicinal plant use pare it with existing approaches in quantitative (Johns and Kimanani 1991). ethnobotany. We then (3) demonstrate how this In cultural anthropology, a quantitative school technique can be used to test two kinds of hy- has long been influential, and more recently there potheses that are of interest to ethnobotanists to has been interest in integrating quantitative and illustrate its potential for contributing to the de- qualitative types of research (e.g., Johnson 1978; velopment of quantitative ethnobotany. In a sec- Smith and Heshusius 1986; but see Hammersley ond paper (Phillips and Gentry 1993), we pro- 1992). Until recently, however, ethnobotanists pose several more kinds of ethnobotanical had been more reluctant to appreciate the po- hypotheses, and test them statistically with our tential significance of quantification. Indeed, the data. very term "quantitative ethnobotany" was coined as recently as 1987 (Prance et al.). Here we define ECOLOGICAL AND CULTURAL it, relatively broadly, "as the application of quan- SETTING titative techniques to the direct analysis of con- The study area is located in the southeastern temporary plant use data." From the examples Peruvian department of Madre de Dios, and