The useful plants of Tambopata,Peru: I. Statistical hypotheses tests with a new quantitative technique

This paper describes a new, simple, quantitative technique for evaluating the relative usefulness of plants to people. The technique is then compared to the quantitative approaches in ethnobotany that have been developed recently. Our technique is used to calculate the importance of over 600 species of woody plants to non-indigenous mestizo people in Tambopata, Amazonian Peru. Two general classes of hypotheses are formulated and tested statistically, concerning (1) the relative importance of different species, and (2) the importance of different families. The plant families are compared with respect to all uses, and with respect to five broad groups of uses. Palms, Annonaceae, and Lauraceae were found to be the most useful woody plant families. On average, the 20 largest woody plant families are most important to mestizos for subsistence construction materials, followed in descending order by commercial, edible, technological, and medicinal uses.