Ten important questions / issues for ethnobotanical research

For at least 30 years researchers have called for a deeper reflection on the paths we desire for ethnobotanical research. Although the discipline of ethnobotany is growing, as measured by the number of publications in the area, there is still work to be done regarding the homogeneity of theoretical and methodological approaches and the implications of ethnobotanical research findings for society as a whole. In this article we present 10 questions/issues that we believe can guide the research and actions of ethnobotanists for the coming years.


Introduction
Ethnobotanists seek to understand how people interact with the environment and obtain plant resources to meet their cultural and physical needs.The first ethnobotanical contributions, dating from the first half of the nineteenth century, consisted of descriptive texts that sought to list plants and their uses (Hunn 2007;Albuquerque et al. 2013;Gaoue et al. 2017).Over the last four decades, however, this type of descriptive contribution has been criticized, largely on the basis that, while the information provided might be of interest, the knowledge gained has a fragile or even nonexistent theoretical basis and little methodological rigor (see Phillips & Gentry 1993;Albuquerque 2009;2013;Gaoue et al. 2017).Moreover, rapid changes in livelihoods have resulted in rapid changes in the way people relate to the environment, making the relationship between people and plants increasingly complex.As a result, ethnobotanists have been increasingly compelled to move beyond descriptive studies and develop a theoretical framework that explains human behavior in relation to plant resource use (Gaoue et al. 2017).
Thus, in recent decades, ethnobotany has incorporated theoretical insights from several disciplines, including ecology, economics and anthropology (Oliveira et al. 2009;Ritter et al. 2015).This has resulted in an increase in the number of publications and the types of approaches used (Albuquerque et al. 2011;2013;Campos et al. 2016).The question, however, is whether these changes answer new questions and contribute to the elucidation of gaps that provide scientific growth.To answer these questions, the discipline needs to reflect on its main challenges and develop new theoretical and methodological research proposals.This reflection exercise has already been undertaken in other sciences and has proven to be quite challenging (Grierson et al. 2011;Sutherland et al. 2013).Indeed, almost a decade ago, Albuquerque & Hanazaki (2009) proposed that the main problems faced in ethnobotany become a field of research.Reflecting on the issues and challenges faced should be the first step in implementing contemporary and relevant research agendas aligned with the advances of recent years.
In this article, we aim to suggest new research proposals based on how current needs are perceived by some researchers working in the field.The questions that follow result from the personal history of each researcher, their theoretical and epistemological orientations, and their academic approaches.Unquestionably, they do not represent a consensus in the community of ethnobotanists but result from the reflections and debates that some of us have been developing over the last few years.Thus, our text is not exhaustive but limited to the experience and vision of the authors.Despite this limitation, we hope that this article may motivate future contributions so that we can implement a research agenda for the future of ethnobotany.An alternative would be to hold discussion workshops so that experts can revisit the issues presented here and propose new ones together.In our view, this is imperative.Although ethnobotany produces more knowledge than other ethnobiological subdisciplines, the scientific community, similar to other fields of knowledge, has been experiencing a process of self-criticism and self-analysis.This requires reflecting on the relevance and current importance of studies based mainly on lists of species and descriptions of their uses, since the field has provided few updates that are usually redundant.
In this article, we present some topics that are not exclusive.However, they can serve as starting points and a way to reach more relevant objectives.We present 10 large questions that are ordered not by any judgment of relevance but by the affinity between them.

How is indigenous and local knowledge in ethnobotanical research best represented?
As ethnobotanical studies rely heavily on indigenous and local knowledge (ILK)1 , they face the challenge of adequately bringing evidence from these knowledge systems.The challenge arises not only because unwritten forms of knowledge can be difficult to transpose to into written scientific studies (Reid et al. 2006;Berkes 2018), but more importantly because scientific studies might decontextualize the information and remove it from the cultural environment that gives it meaning (Stevenson 1996).While there is a growing and laudable tendency to include indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs) as coauthors in ethnobotanical research (e.g., Paniagua-Zambrana et al. 2017), this procedure alone does not guarantee the proper representation of ILK in ethnobotanical research (Turnhout et al. 2016).Since this procedure is not commonly employed, perhaps it generates difficulties for decision makers to operationalize the use of this data when monitoring species or systems.
Recently, some authors have suggested that, where relevant, information and data from ILK systems should be considered through a 'multiple evidence-based' (MEB) approach (Tengö et al. 2014), which puts ILK on equal footing with globally generated academic science.The MEB approach notes that there are "parallels whereby indigenous, local, and scientific knowledge systems are viewed to generate different manifestations of knowledge (…)" (Tengö et al. 2014: 571).Ethnobotanists could engage with this or similar frameworks to continue in the quest to better represent ILK in ethnobotanical research.
Ethnobotany has sustained development in recent decades.However, reflections on ethnobotanical research itself have experienced little development, especially in the theoretical-methodological domain, as mentioned earlier.Reflection is understood here as a recursive process (nonlinear) that involves rethinking our thoughts in a way that interpolates our fundamental assumptions (Maturana 1996;Morin 2009).Numerous ethnobotanical studies address ILK, but an important fact is not considered because the knowledge system of "the Other" is not directly accessible to us (see Ludwig 2017).Conversely, it is indirectly accessible through the actions that knowledge guides, including narratives (verbal language), behaviors, practices, and selective strategies, which can be evaluated.Knowledge is retroactively and recursively embodied in actions that in turn inspire knowledge, thus forming a recursive relationship.The researcher starts with actions to reconstruct the knowledge that generated them (Hurrell 2014).
The interview aims to rebuild the local knowledge system using verbal language (Hurrell 2014).Nevertheless, its value as a complex communication experience is often underestimated or ignored.An initial reflection indicates that the interview is a conversation (Maturana 1996), which necessarily implies a context that gives it meaning.However, nonverbal language (gestures, use of space) (Hall 2005) is not considered a descriptive variable, although in human communication, nonverbal language is frequently more relevant than verbal language in terms of meaning.In addition, the presence of the researcher usually seems to be overlooked, and the conversation becomes a unilateral narrative of the interviewee outside the interview context.In this case, the self-excluded researcher acts as a mere translator.A second reflection shows that the researcher rebuilds knowledge because he is included in the conversation (Auge 2014).Researcher "absence" generates a risk: he transfers his own categories to the interviewee, e.g., the distinction between native and exotic species, or what a resource is.

What methodological innovations can capture the dynamic nature of local/traditional botanical knowledge?
ILK systems, including botanical knowledge, are dynamic by nature in that they adapt to new ecological and social conditions (Gomez-Baggethun et al. 2013).In most regions of the world, IPLCs are subject to increasing social, economic, political and environmental/ecological pressures, experiencing high rates of social and environmental changes.These changes, no doubt, have an impact on plant-based knowledge systems (PBKS).While these changes have mostly resulted in the loss of knowledge (Reyes-Garcia et al. 2013;Aswani et al. 2018), in other circumstances, they have just led to changes in the knowledge system (Reyes-Garcia et al. 2014).In several parts of the world, current studies can benefit from past studies, using them as baselines in cross-sectional approaches (Aswani et al. 2018).The use of such approaches can help in understanding dynamic aspects of ILK over time.
Given the fast pace of socioenvironmental changes and their impact on ILK systems, an ethnobotanist's tool kit might not be adequate to document such changes (for methods, see, for example, Albuquerque et al. 2014a;2019a).The use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) by knowledge holders presents an untapped methodological innovation for capturing the dynamic nature of botanical knowledge.Through online platforms that allow the collection of data, knowledge holders could have more active participation in ethnobotanical research, especially if access to the internet is improved.While some authors have started to explore these methodological innovations (e.g., Reyes-Garcia et al. 2018), ethnobotanists should continue to explore its strengths and weaknesses to develop methodological innovations that allow for the dynamic nature of botanical knowledge to be captured.

What theoretical innovations can capture the dynamic nature of ILK systems?
There are several possibilities and alternatives for integrating different theoretical scenarios in order to advance the contribution of ethnobotany for understanding the dynamic relationships between IPLCs and plants.Albuquerque & Ferreira Júnior (2017), for example, list several research questions from an ecological and evolutionary perspective.Gaoue et al. (2017) describe and systematize different hypotheses that have been added to ethnobotanical studies in the last 30 years that still need to be tested in different social-ecological contexts2.Given the interdisciplinary nature of ethnobotany, the field is receptive to different theoretical articulations, and ethnobotanists could continue to explore these opportunities (see, for example, opportunities to integrate phylogeny and taxonomy to understand Researchers from different disciplines have agreed that humans have modified environments throughout history to favor their survival, producing persistent effects (Laland et al. 2010;Levis et al. 2017;Sullivan et al. 2017).In this case, new generations inherit modified environments that result from past decisions, and this may affect the knowledge and current use of plants for different uses (Albuquerque et al. 2018;Lins Neto & Albuquerque 2018), especially in the face of climate change (see Ladio 2017).
A recent study showed that IPLC groups in Africa, located in regions with a high incidence of malaria, knew of a great number of plants that could be used for treatment (Santoro et al. 2017).This relationship occurred before the adoption of public policies to control the disease, which seems to have negatively affected the knowledge of antimalarial plants.In these groups, the incidence of malaria may be a result of changes in the environment that occurred in the past, which has generated pressure to increase plant richness in the treatment of malaria.Similarly, for plants used as fuel in northeastern Brazil, the number of known exotic plants is favored in environments with a scarcity of forest areas, which will increase fuel availability (Silva et al. 2018).Thus, it is possible that human strategies that were applied in the past and altered the availability of native species have driven the selection and use of exotic species over time.
In other words, we need to better understand how the action of the human species has modified and still modifies ecosystems and other species and how past human decisions may have affected the way we interact with plants in the present (see examples of approaches in Silva et al. 2017;2019).Research guided by this approach can reveal how past human decisions affect the evolution of plant-based knowledge systems (PBKS).

What challenges do we need to face to better understand the structure and function of socialecological systems?
Social-ecological systems comprise plants and other elements of the environment known and/or used by people, information flow (cultural transmission), storage and retrieval of this information (cognition), and other factors (see some research questions in Albuquerque & Ferreira Junior 2017).Despite this complexity, we need to understand relatively simple things for which we still do not have good answers.For example, some ethnobotanical studies often record the categories of PBKS.However, few studies have examined the interaction between the elements of these categories.For example, one could test whether uses considered more "noble" in a species stop or block uses considered less noble for the same species.The rationale is that people would adopt the most relevant use for the plant and use substitute species for other purposes in which the species would fit.Information in the literature supports this argument.Lins Neto et al. (2010), for example, in a study in the Brazilian semiarid region, observed that the species Spondias tuberosa Arruda was of great food importance but was generally only used for logging when there was a natural fall of the trunk.This indicates that special use would limit or protect plants for other uses.Ritualistic species are also normally not used for other purposes, even if they have the potential for it (see Colding & Folke 2001).
Answering this question is important because the use of a species for one purpose may increase the chances that it will be tried and harvested for another purpose.For example, in a compilation of studies from the northern region of South America, Bennett & Prance (2000) suggest that most medicinal plants have been adopted because of their value as food or medicine.Thus, plants used as ornamental and food products would be more likely to be incorporated into local pharmacopoeias (see an implication of this idea in the hypothesis of versatility -Gaoue et al.

2017).
The elucidation of these interactions can help in understanding why certain species, even when exhibiting high potential for a given use, are barely used for that purpose.From a conservation point of view, such information would help predict what would happen, for example, with the use of a species for wood purposes when other uses were added to or removed from the socialecological system.Some specific questions could be the following: Can the use of a species for a given purpose curb or block its use for other purposes?Can the use of a species for a given purpose increase the chances that it will be used for other purposes?
Another important and relevant issue in ethnobotany is to study the transmission of cultural information (Santoro et al. 2018).Social transmission or social learning is the process of learning with other individuals by interaction or observation of them or their products (Kendal et al. 2018).The capacity of learn from others allow us to obtain an adaptive information without the cost of experimentation (Mesoudi 2011).Moreover, it is possible to create more complex knowledge by using the previous transmitted information as basis to innovate (Boyd et al. 2011).Humans have psychological mechanisms that indirectly favour the acquisition of cultural information (Enquist et al. 2007).These mechanisms or social learning strategies are related with different kinds of decisions (see Kendal et al. 2018).
The majority of research in ethnobotany related with these aspects just describes the different types of social transmission.There is a necessity to go deeper in this subject.Some important questions are: What makes an information on a plant more transmitted than others for a same purpose?Who are the people considered by the community as sources of knowledge about plants?Do the learning models change if plant use (food, medicine, timber, construction) is different?What are the cues used by people to detect the learning models?Expertise?Similarity (e.g.women learning with women)?Are possible that people copy information about one cultural domain (e.g.medicinal plants) with people that are recognized as knowledgeable about other cultural domains (e.g.agriculture)?

How can ethnobotanical research better contribute to strengthening biodiversity governance?
The potential of ethnobotanical knowledge for biodiversity conservation is acknowledged in the academic literature (e.g., Porter-Bolland et al. 2012;Turnhout et al. 2012;Pardo-de-Santayana & Macia 2015;Mistry et al. 2016), and is experiencing a growth in recognition among policy-makers and science-policy platforms (Vohland et al. 2011;Ford et al. 2016;Díaz et al. 2018).A notable development that largely contributed to the recognition of ILK in international policy-making was the establishment of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 1992.Specifically, Article 8j of the CBD establishes that signatory countries should respect, preserve, and promote the contributions of traditional knowledge to biodiversity conservation, which includes local/traditional botanical knowledge.ILK and associated practices are considered important and relevant for achieving conservation goals and are treated with the same importance and relevance as any other form of knowledge in the implementation of the CBD.Even within conservation goals, the CBD encompasses targets such as target 13 of the Global Strategy for Plants Conservation (GSPC), which concerns ILK about plant use and the dependence of these peoples on plants.However, at least in Brazil, there is still a lack of integrative and effective policy initiatives, and profound changes are necessary for the achievement of such goals that articulate conservation and IPLCs (Hanazaki et al. 2018).
Despite interest among scientists and policy-makers, few countries are making systematic efforts to preserve and, to a lesser degree, promote the use of ethnobotanical knowledge to strengthen environmental governance.There have been several initiatives in that direction (see Benyei et al. 2019;Lakshmi et al. 2014 for reviews).However, only a few have the capacity to influence policy making.Over the last two years, the IPBES Global Assessment has developed one of the first global-scale mechanisms for operationalizing ILK in sustainability decision-making (McElwee et al. 2019).Ethnobotanists should engage in this and similar initiatives to bring ethnobotanical research results into the applied domain.

How can ethnobotanical research better contribute to strengthening the political interests of IPLCs?
IPLCs are the main interlocutors of ethnobiological research and have always been the target of threats to their identities, knowledge, and, above all, their territories (Soldati & Albuquerque 2016).This situation was formally denounced in 1988 in the "Carta de Belém".However, when this document was reprinted thirty years later during the International Congress of Ethnobiology in 2018 (Belém, Brazil), the same themes were highlighted, which suggests that ethnobotanical research could have more strongly benefitted local people.In other words, ethnobotanists have not succeeded in vocalizing the need for a more inclusive socio-biodiversity conservation project despite growing political agreement regarding its relevance.
Therefore, the moment becomes opportune for a "Political Ethnobotany" (see also Alexiades 2003), starting from the premise that society is divided among different social actors who present different projects that are irreconcilable in most cases.This scientific project can be synthesized by the challenge of answering two major questions.First, "How are threats to territories, identities and ILK organized, structured and advanced?"Second, "What are the strategies of resistance of IPLCs for the use of the plant resources in their territories?" Political Ethnobotany should also be concerned with the construction of bridges between concepts and theories of fields close to ethnobotany and the real demands of our interlocutors.For example, it should advance studies on historical ecology and landscape domestication to evaluate the role of ILK in the construction and modification of landscapes, especially in protected areas occupied by these peoples.Wolverton et al. (2016) analyze three case studies in which ethnobiological research talks with Political Ecology and "the relations of power" in our society.Finally, rather than describing specific processes and cases, political ethnobotany could benefit from dialogue with other fields of knowledge that reflect a more socially engaged ecology (see Martínez-Alier 2003;Santos 2014).

How have current and past migrations been shaping PBKS?
Human movements are reflected in the cultural and social characteristics of people due to historic changes that spit, merge, and reorganize the distribution of people in space.Migration is an old phenomenon that is ongoing; there were approximately 244 million international migrants in the world in 2015, both across borders and within countries, which is 3.3 percent of the global population (International Organization for Migration 2018).The separation of human species into ethnic, cultural, and linguistic groups was an outcome of migration, and it has also been the basis of the transmission of genes, cultures, and knowledge (Marsella & Ring 2003).While migrating, people not only carry, adapt, and transform their own culture and society but also transform other living beings.
Not only people migrate; a whole set of local or traditional knowledge migrates with them (Pieroni & Vandebroek 2007;Ceuterick et al. 2008;2011;Andel & Westers 2010;Abreu et al. 2015), and propagules, seeds and plants can also be transported and adapted (see Medeiros et al. 2012).The study of the migration of human populations is fundamentally important for understanding the dynamics of biocultural knowledge and transformations in natural and urban landscapes through times past and in the current globalized world (Pieroni & Vandebroek 2007;Waldstein 2008;Salpeteur et al. 2016).
This biocultural knowledge changes as a function of adaptive processes (Pieroni & Vandebroek 2007), which can be interpreted through a variety of explanatory models (see, for example, Turner et al. 2003;Erten 2018;Fonseca & Balick 2018).However, every model needs to be fitted to differing local realities.Depending on the social-ecological context in which the immigrant groups are located, there may be incorporations of native species and changes of perceptions towards species considered culturally important (Medeiros et al. 2012;Pirker et al. 2012;Kujawska et al. 2017).From this framework, we raise two main questions: How can we study ethnobotany of past and present migratory movements considering that they occur in different timeframes?How can the movement of people be related to changes in local environments and local floras?

Ethnobotany and urbanization: how do we understand PBKS in cities?
Along with migration, urbanization has become an important issue, especially in the last half century.More than half of the world's population lives in urban areas (55 %), and the projections are for this percentage to increase to 68 % by 2050 (United Nations 2018).Urbanization results in deep transformations to the environment, with changes in the abundance, diversity, and composition of species in the urbanized area and beyond (Faeth et al. 2005).Moreover, urbanization can lead people to shift to a sedentary lifestyle, consume processed food and disconnect with nature (Hawkes 2006;Soga & Gaston 2016;Turreira-García et al. 2017).
In cities, several spaces remain or are created where people interact with the plant world (see Ladio & Albuquerque 2014).Home gardens, for example, survived and evolved over centuries of biocultural transformations as one of the oldest systems of land use (Nair & Kumar 2006).Green lands and home gardens in urbanized areas promote diversity and food security, allow for adaptation to climate change, improve life quality and wellbeing and can also increase the connectivity between urbanized landscapes and remnant forest areas (Galhena et al. 2013;Larios et al. 2013;Mattsson et al. 2013;Capaldi et al. 2014;Peroni et al. 2016;Ávila et al. 2017;Shackleton et al. 2017).
Considering multicultural societies, especially in large cities, most exotic plants can represent the diversity in home gardens and green spaces in urban areas, and perceptions and preferences of natural resources can govern the purpose of a green area in the city.In this context, some major issues surrounding ethnobotany and urbanization can be proposed: How does increasing urbanization result in changes in the local and regional diversity of useful plants?How are people transforming urban landscapes through their dependence on plants?Are there cultural signatures of ILK in green spaces of urban areas?How can we rethink conservation strategies considering the increasing disconnect with nature -and the consequent knowledge of native plants -and the increase of exotic plants in urban areas?

How can we go beyond searching for medicinal plants?
Classically, ethnobotany has accumulated great knowledge about medicinal plants.The focus on medicinal plants has been lacking, and this can be due to several reasons.One of the reasons is based on the argument that by investigating this very specific knowledge, we can advance the discovery of new drugs.However, different researchers have long criticized the fact that few new developments have arisen in this sense, and this is often due to several problems in how the research is conducted (see Albuquerque et al. 2014b;Medeiros et al. 2014).
Moreover, several other uses require an ethnobotanist's attention.Exploitation of wood, for example, is among the oldest and most frequent forest uses (Almeida et al. 2008).Timber forest products include all woody material with potential use as stakes, firewood, buildings, power generation, cellulose production and others.This resource is widely used by IPLCs, especially with regard to the socioeconomic reality found in developing countries, where wood is a resource for fuel, buildings, fences, hedges, etc. (Walters 2005;Ramos et al. 2008).Additionally, little is known about the influence of logging resources on the ecology of tropical forests, since this practice can substantially affect canopy cover and the basal area of trees (Kumar & Shahabuddin 2005) and have consequences for the plant community of the entire region.For example, above-ground biomass and plant species diversity are generally higher in older forests compared to younger forests (Álvarez-Yépiz et al. 2008).
Thus, ethnobotanists could try to answer some important questions from uses other than medicine, such as: Are the population dynamics of extracted species influenced by the extractive practice?How can the extraction of one species for logging purposes alter the population structure of other plant species?Is the composition and richness of species in a plant community influenced by logging?Finally, what are the consequences of these environmental changes on the extractive practices of IPLCs?

How can the interface between ecology and ethnobotany explain the processes associated with the collection of plant resources?
The collection of plant resources by IPLCs has been the subject of several studies over the decades.Many of them focused on aspects related to the knowledge and use of plants to infer how a selection pattern is formed for the collection (Feitosa et al. 2014).However, to understand the process of collecting a resource by human populations, it is necessary to have the greatest amount of information possible on all stages, from the selection of the resource to the time when the resource regenerates in nature and is available for collection again.Little is known about the variables that influence the strategies adopted by people in the foraging process, the levels of damage that species are able to withstand after collection, or the time required for species to regenerate (Mariot et al. 2014;Baldauf & Santos 2014;Feitosa et al. 2017).
Depending on the intrinsic characteristics of the species, evidence shows that it is possible to keep collecting large amounts in a sustainable manner (see Lopes & Begossi 2011).Another issue not yet known by researchers is how the behavior of foragers influences the decision-making process of others, especially how the collection patterns affect the conservation of PBKS.Currently, the first questions are based on the influence that collection exerts on the sustainability of the practice.Moreover, ILK is an important variable in harvesting practices, and it is important to understand how it interacts with other variables.
Related to this, plant resources constitute part of the local, regional, national and international markets, forming the so-called chain of biodiversity.Although many of these chains are directed to local markets, which are already recognized as an excellent field for ethnobotanical research, it is still necessary to explain the influence of these commercial relationships on collection behavior, consumption and the production environment.
Thus, ethnobotanical surveys are capable of generating important insights about the influence of trade on the behavior of harvesting and consumption of resources by IPLCs (Ruiz-Pérez et al. 2004) as well as on the impacts on the production environment (Varghese & Ticktin 2008).However, to gain this knowledge, it is necessary to adopt an integrative perspective for the analysis of the different interdependent stages of production, from resource collectors to final consumers (see Booker et al. 2012;Silva et al. 2014).
Important ethnobotanical questions regarding the role of markets in spreading ILK and plant materials include: How do markets influence, and how are markets influenced by, social-ecological systems over time?What are the factors and how do they contribute to the emergence of socio-biodiversity chains and the capacity to sustain themselves in the market in a sustainable way?The answers to these questions may strongly support ethnobotany for developing conservation strategies of sociobiodiversity with income generation for IPLCs.

Future directions
The issues we posed earlier for reflection and action represent opportunities to advance ethnobotany as a science but also highlight the potential role of ethnobotanists in mediating between different sectors of society.Answering the above questions requires an interdisciplinary approach, which is key to a complex science such as ethnobotany.More efforts will be needed to answer the suggested questions (and others of interest in the area), which may involve integrating theoretical scenarios and methods proposed by other fields.This is challenging because it is necessary to adjust concepts, methods and explanations from other areas to the particularities of PBKS.Nevertheless, from the evidence obtained from these efforts, we can develop our own theoretical field.However, we will only be able to move forward effectively if different research groups in different parts of the world are willing to address these issues so we can compare and systematize the findings.
plant selection: Saslis-Lagoudakis et al. 2014; Toneu et al. 2018 -and the new theory in ethnobiology and related fields proposed by Albuquerque et al. 2019b).