Section for Ecoinformatics and Biodiversity, Department of Bioscience, Aarhus University, Ny Munkegade 114, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark.
Department of Biogeography and Global Change, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, CSIC, Calle José Gutiérrez Abascal 2, 28006 Madrid, Spain.
Nat Plants. 2017 Jan 23;3:16220. doi: 10.1038/nplants.2016.220.
The well-being of the global human population rests on provisioning services delivered by 12% of the Earth's ∼400,000 plant species. Plant utilization by humans is influenced by species traits, but it is not well understood which traits underpin different human needs. Here, we focus on palms (Arecaceae), one of the most economically important plant groups globally, and demonstrate that provisioning services related to basic needs, such as food and medicine, show a strong link to fundamental functional and geographic traits. We integrate data from 2,201 interviews on plant utilization from three biomes in South America-spanning 68 communities, 43 ethnic groups and 2,221 plant uses-with a dataset of 4 traits (leaf length, stem volume, fruit volume, geographic range size) and a species-level phylogeny. For all 208 palm species occurring in our study area, we test for relations between their traits and perceived value. We find that people preferentially use large, widespread species rather than small, narrow-ranged species, and that different traits are linked to different uses. Further, plant size and geographic range size are stronger predictors of ecosystem service realization for palm services related to basic human needs than less-basic needs (for example, ritual). These findings suggest that reliance on plant size and availability may have prevented our optimal realization of wild-plant services, since ecologically rare yet functionally important (for example, chemically) clades may have been overlooked. Beyond expanding our understanding of how local people use biodiversity in mega-diverse regions, our trait- and phylogeny-based approach helps to understand the processes that underpin ecosystem service realization, a necessary step to meet societal needs in a changing world with a growing human population.
全球人类的福祉依赖于地球约 40 万种植物物种中的 12%提供的服务。人类对植物的利用受到物种特征的影响，但人们并不清楚哪些特征是满足不同人类需求的基础。在这里，我们专注于棕榈科（Arecaceae），这是全球最具经济重要性的植物群体之一，我们证明了与基本需求（如食物和药物）相关的供应服务与基本功能和地理特征之间存在很强的联系。我们整合了来自南美洲三个生物群落的 2201 份有关植物利用的访谈数据——涵盖了 68 个社区、43 个族群和 2221 种植物用途——以及一个包含 4 个特征（叶长、茎体积、果实体积、地理分布范围大小）和物种水平系统发育的数据集。对于我们研究区域中所有 208 种棕榈科植物，我们检验了它们的特征与感知价值之间的关系。我们发现，人们更倾向于使用大型、广泛分布的物种，而不是小型、分布范围狭窄的物种，并且不同的特征与不同的用途相关。此外，植物大小和地理分布范围大小是与人类基本需求（如食物）相关的棕榈科服务实现生态系统服务的更好预测因子，而不是不太基本的需求（如仪式）。这些发现表明，对植物大小和可利用性的依赖可能会阻碍我们对野生植物服务的最佳实现，因为在生态上稀有但在功能上重要（例如，化学成分上）的进化枝可能被忽视了。除了扩大我们对在生物多样性丰富的地区当地人如何利用生物多样性的理解之外，我们基于特征和系统发育的方法有助于理解支撑生态系统服务实现的过程，这是在人口不断增长的变化世界中满足社会需求的必要步骤。
