Santos Francisco Igor Ribeiro, Lopes Clarissa Gomes Reis, Albuquerque Ulysses Paulino, Araújo Elcida de Lima
Programa de Pós-Graduação em Etnobiologia e Conservação da Natureza, Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco, Recife, Pernambuco, 52171-900, Brazil.
Laboratório de Ecologia e Evolução dos Sistemas Socioecológicos, Departamento de Botânica, Centro de Biociências, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Av. Prof. Moraes Rego, Recife, Pernambuco, 1235, 50670-901, Brazil.
Environ Monit Assess. 2025 Jul 19;197(8):929. doi: 10.1007/s10661-025-14255-4.
The increasing conversion of secondary forests into anthropogenic areas, such as croplands, pastures, or homegardens, has been the focus of ecological studies investigating the impacts of human activities on biodiversity. Ethnobiological studies suggest that environmental changes influence the selection of useful plants by local communities, especially in landscapes transformed into mosaics of forests of different ages, affecting their repertoires of useful plants. This study investigated how forest age (early forest, young forest, and mature forest) influenced the richness, composition, versatility, utilitarian redundancy, and the functional trait dimension of plants known to be useful by rural communities, in areas of Cerrado transitioning to Caatinga, in Northeast Brazil. The results indicated that forest age influenced the richness, composition, versatility, and functional trait dimension of useful plants. A higher number of useful species and greater versatility of uses were recorded in young forests, compared to other forests. No relationship was found between forest age and the utilitarian redundancy of useful plants. Our findings highlight that the studied socio-ecological systems perceive forest age as a determinant for the utilization of useful plants. Resource acquisition by people follows a logic of maximizing benefits over costs, making forests in intermediate successional stages more attractive. However, the absence of differences in utilitarian redundancy among these forests of different ages suggests that these human populations may also choose other successional stages for utilitarian purposes. This indicates that the functional trait dimension of plants known to be useful varies across forests of different ages. Our study demonstrates that forests at intermediate successional stages harbor a greater number of useful plants, compared to early and late-stage forests. These findings highlight the importance of such fragments for the provision of plant resources and reinforce the need to develop targeted management and conservation strategies to maintain these essential ecosystem services for human populations.
次生林日益转变为农田、牧场或家庭菜园等人为区域，这一直是生态研究的重点，这些研究旨在调查人类活动对生物多样性的影响。民族生物学研究表明，环境变化会影响当地社区对有用植物的选择，尤其是在转变为不同年龄森林镶嵌体的景观中，从而影响他们的有用植物种类。本研究调查了在巴西东北部从塞拉多向卡廷加过渡的地区，森林年龄（早期森林、幼龄森林和成熟森林）如何影响农村社区已知有用的植物的丰富度、组成、多功能性、功利冗余以及功能性状维度。结果表明，森林年龄影响了有用植物的丰富度、组成、多功能性和功能性状维度。与其他森林相比，幼龄森林中记录到的有用物种数量更多，用途也更多样。未发现森林年龄与有用植物的功利冗余之间存在关联。我们的研究结果突出表明，所研究的社会生态系统将森林年龄视为有用植物利用的一个决定因素。人们获取资源遵循着收益最大化高于成本的逻辑，使得处于中间演替阶段的森林更具吸引力。然而，这些不同年龄森林在功利冗余方面没有差异，这表明这些人群也可能出于功利目的选择其他演替阶段。这表明已知有用的植物的功能性状维度在不同年龄的森林中有所不同。我们的研究表明，与早期和晚期森林相比，处于中间演替阶段的森林拥有更多有用植物。这些发现突出了此类片段对于提供植物资源的重要性，并强化了制定有针对性的管理和保护策略以维持这些对人类至关重要的生态系统服务的必要性。
