Comparative phylogenetic methods and the cultural evolution of medicinal plant use

Teixidor Toneu, I., Jordan, F. M. and Hawkins, J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9048-8016 (2018) Comparative phylogenetic methods and the cultural evolution of medicinal plant use. Nature Plants, 4. pp. 754-761. ISSN 2055-0278 doi: 10.1038/s41477-018-0226-6

Abstract/Summary

Human life depends on plant biodiversity and the ways in which plants are used are culturally determined. Whilst anthropologists have used phylogenetic comparative methods (PCMs) to gain an increasingly sophisticated understanding of the evolution of political, religious, social, and material culture, plant use has been almost entirely neglected. Medicinal plants are of special interest because of their role in maintaining people’s health across the world. PCMs in particular, and cultural evolutionary theory in general, provide a framework in which to study the diversity of medicinal plant applications cross-culturally, and to infer changes in plant use through time. These methods can be applied to single medicinal plants as well as the entire set of plants used by a culture for medicine, and they account for the non-independence of data when testing for floristic, cultural or other drivers of plant use. With cultural, biological, and linguistic diversity under threat, gaining a deeper and broader understanding of the variation of medicinal plant use through time and space is pressing.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/78048
Identification Number/DOI	10.1038/s41477-018-0226-6
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Life Sciences > School of Biological Sciences > Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Publisher	Nature Publishing Group
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