ABSTRACT
Palms are a natural resource that has been abundantly used by Amerindians for centuries. Only a few palm domestications have been reported in the American tropics, where there is great diversity of the Arecaceae family. We report the results of a survey combining ethnobotanical and ecological methods to study the past and present management and distribution of palms by the Asháninka indigenous people from the Tambo river region in the Peruvian Amazon. Our objectives were to document palm-related traditional ecological knowledge, to examine correlation between palm abundance and Asháninka management practices and social exchange of palm resources, and to address the question of how the Asháninka have modified palm diversity and distribution in their territory. We found that most palm species have multiple uses; the most intensively managed were palms that provide thatch, notably Attalea phalerata, Oenocarpus mapora and Phytelephas macrocarpa. Of these, Attalea phalerata was the most commonly cultivated and was found only in cultivated stands. Our results have implications for understanding the domestication of Attalea weberbaueri, which is a landrace within the Attalea phalerata complex. A closer understanding of this process would require morphometric and genetic methods to compare wild and managed populations.
ABSTRACT
Grasses characteristically produce a huge amount of small pollen grains, which pose a risk to allergy sufferers. In many aerobiological studies, great variations in the behaviour of the grass pollen season are stressed. We state that in Rzeszów and Ostrowiec Sw. there is some regularity in the pattern of the main grass pollen seasons, which is clearly double-peaked. The aim of our work was to elaborate the algorithm which defines the main grass pollen season. Next, the null hypothesis was tested about the lack of difference between daily pollen concentrations and meteorological parameters. Grass pollen seasons were defined using the method of fitting two bell curves. The estimated grass pollen season is characterised by two periods of high or relatively high concentrations, separated by a period of low concentration. In order to investigate the time dependence of the correlation between pollen concentration and the weather parameters, the Gaussian-weighted correlation coefficient has been calculated. Maximum temperature, mean temperature and sunshine positively correlated with pollen concentrations, but relative air humidity and rainfall on the previous day had a negative effect. The temperatures of the second and third ten-day periods of April were the best independent variables for forecasting the beginning and peak dates of the main pollen seasons. An analysis of the results shows that the pattern of successive flowering in grass species and meadow cutting dates appear to be the factors which cause the characteristic bimodal behaviour of the grass pollen season.
