Sensory Ecology, Bioeconomy, and the Age of COVID: A Parallax View of Indigenous and Scientific Knowledge.

Drawing on original ethnobotanical and anthropological research among Indigenous peoples across the Amazon, we examine synergies and dissonances between Indigenous and Western scientific knowledge about the environment, resource use, and sustainability. By focusing on the sensory dimension of Indigenous engagements with the environment-an approach we have described as "sensory ecology" and explored through the method of "phytoethnography"-we promote a symmetrical dialogue between Indigenous and scientific understandings around such phenomena as animal-plant mutualisms, phytochemical toxicity, sustainable forest management in "multinatural" landscapes, and the emergence of new diseases like the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19). Drawing examples from our own and other published works, we explore the possibilities and limitations of a "parallax view" attempting to hold Indigenous and scientific knowledge in focus simultaneously. As the concept of "bioeconomy" emerges as a key alternative for sustainable development of the Amazon, we encourage a critical and urgent engagement between dominant Western conceptions and Indigenous Amazonian knowledge, practices, and cultural values. Cognitive science, which has long contributed to studies of Indigenous categorization and conceptualization of the natural world, continues to play an important role in building bridges of mutual communication and respect between Indigenous and scientific approaches to sustainability and biodiversity conservation.

Global importance of Indigenous Peoples, their lands, and knowledge systems for saving the world's primates from extinction.

Primates, represented by 521 species, are distributed across 91 countries primarily in the Neotropic, Afrotropic, and Indo-Malayan realms. Primates inhabit a wide range of habitats and play critical roles in sustaining healthy ecosystems that benefit human and nonhuman communities. Approximately 68% of primate species are threatened with extinction because of global pressures to convert their habitats for agricultural production and the extraction of natural resources. Here, we review the scientific literature and conduct a spatial analysis to assess the significance of Indigenous Peoples' lands in safeguarding primate biodiversity. We found that Indigenous Peoples' lands account for 30% of the primate range, and 71% of primate species inhabit these lands. As their range on these lands increases, primate species are less likely to be classified as threatened or have declining populations. Safeguarding Indigenous Peoples' lands, languages, and cultures represents our greatest chance to prevent the extinction of the world's primates.

Differential resilience of Amazonian otters along the Rio Negro in the aftermath of the 20th century international fur trade.

Commercial hunting for the international trade in animal hides in the 20th century decimated many populations of aquatic wildlife in Amazonia. However, impacts varied significantly between different species and regions, depending upon hunting intensity, accessibility of habitat, and the inherent resilience of various species and their habitats. We investigated the differential responses of two Amazonian Mustelid species, the neotropical otter and giant otter, to commercial hunting pressure along the upper Rio Negro in Brazil, and examined historical factors that influenced spatial and temporal variation in commercial exploitation. We analyzed previously unanalyzed data from historical records of hide shipments to track changes in hide sales and prices for the two species in the late 20th century. We also gathered oral histories from older Baniwa people who had witnessed or participated in commercial otter hunting. These complimentary data sources reveal how intrinsic biological and social characteristics of the two otter species interacted with market forces and regional history. Whereas giant otter populations were driven to local or regional extinction during the late 20th century by commercial hunting, neotropical otters persisted. In recent decades, giant otter populations have returned to some parts of the upper Rio Negro, a development which local people welcome as part of a generalized recovery of the ecosystems in their territory as a result of the banning of animal pelt exports and indigenous land demarcation. This paper expands the scope of the field historical ecology and reflects on the role of local knowledge in biodiversity conservation.

Empty forest or empty rivers? A century of commercial hunting in Amazonia.

The Amazon basin is the largest and most species-rich tropical forest and river system in the world, playing a pivotal role in global climate regulation and harboring hundreds of traditional and indigenous cultures. It is a matter of intense debate whether the ecosystem is threatened by hunting practices, whereby an "empty forest" loses critical ecological functions. Strikingly, no previous study has examined Amazonian ecosystem resilience through the perspective of the massive 20th century international trade in furs and skins. We present the first historical account of the scale and impacts of this trade and show that whereas aquatic species suffered basin-wide population collapse, terrestrial species did not. We link this differential resilience to the persistence of adequate spatial refuges for terrestrial species, enabling populations to be sustained through source-sink dynamics, contrasting with unremitting hunting pressure on more accessible aquatic habitats. Our findings attest the high vulnerability of aquatic fauna to unregulated hunting, particularly during years of severe drought. We propose that the relative resilience of terrestrial species suggests a marked opportunity for managing, rather than criminalizing, contemporary traditional subsistence hunting in Amazonia, through both the engagement of local people in community-based comanagement programs and science-led conservation governance.

Pre-Columbian floristic legacies in modern homegardens of Central Amazonia.

Historical ecologists have demonstrated legacy effects in apparently wild landscapes in Europe, North America, Mesoamerica, Amazonia, Africa and Oceania. People live and farm in archaeological sites today in many parts of the world, but nobody has looked for the legacies of past human occupations in the most dynamic areas in these sites: homegardens. Here we show that the useful flora of modern homegardens is partially a legacy of pre-Columbian occupations in Central Amazonia: the more complex the archaeological context, the more variable the floristic composition of useful native plants in homegardens cultivated there today. Species diversity was 10% higher in homegardens situated in multi-occupational archaeological contexts compared with homegardens situated in single-occupational ones. Species heterogeneity (ß-diversity) among archaeological contexts was similar for the whole set of species, but markedly different when only native Amazonian species were included, suggesting the influence of pre-conquest indigenous occupations on current homegarden species composition. Our findings show that the legacy of pre-Columbian occupations is visible in the most dynamic of all agroecosystems, adding another dimension to the human footprint in the Amazonian landscape.

The floating forest: traditional knowledge and use of matupá vegetation islands by riverine peoples of the central Amazon.

Matupás are floating vegetation islands found in floodplain lakes of the central Brazilian Amazon. They form initially from the agglomeration of aquatic vegetation, and through time can accumulate a substrate of organic matter sufficient to grow forest patches of several hectares in area and up to 12 m in height. There is little published information on matupás despite their singular characteristics and importance to local fauna and people. In this study we document the traditional ecological knowledge of riverine populations who live near and interact with matupás. We expected that their knowledge, acquired through long term observations and use in different stages of the matupá life cycle, could help clarify various aspects about the ecology and natural history of these islands that field biologists may not have had the opportunity to observe. Research was carried out in five riverine communities of the Amanã Sustainable Development Reserve (Brazil). Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 45 inhabitants in order to register local understandings of how matupás are formed, biotic/abiotic factors related to their occurrence, the plants and animals that occur on them, their ecological relevance, and local uses. Local people elucidated several little-known aspects about matupá ecology, especially regarding the importance of seasonal dynamics of high/low water for matupás formation and the relevance of these islands for fish populations. Soil from matupás is especially fertile and is frequently gathered for use in vegetable gardens. In some cases, crops are planted directly onto matupás, representing an incipient agricultural experiment that was previously undocumented in the Amazon. Matupás are also considered a strategic habitat for fishing, mainly for arapaima (Arapaima gigas). The systematic study of traditional ecological knowledge proved to be an important tool for understanding this little-known Amazonian landscape.

Spatial tools for modeling the sustainability of subsistence hunting in tropical forests.

Subsistence hunting provides a crucial food source for rural populations in tropical forests, but it is often practiced unsustainably. We use the empirical observation that subsistence hunters are central-place foragers to develop three "bio-demographic" hunting models of increasing complexity and realism for assessing the sustainability of hunting of an indicator species. In all our models, we calculate the spatial pattern of depletion of an indicator species (here, a large-bodied primate) across a landscape. Specifically, we show how to identify the area surrounding a human settlement that is expected to suffer local extinction. Our approach is an improvement over well-known sustainability indices of hunting, which are prone to error and do not provide clear links to policy prescriptions. Our first approach models the long-term effect of a single settlement and (1) can be parameterized with easily obtainable field data (such as settlement maps and knowledge of the major weapon used), (2) is simple enough to be used without requiring technical skill, and (3) reveals the asymptotic relationship between local human density and the level of game depletion. Our second model allows multiple settlements with overlapping hunting zones over large spatial scales. Our third model additionally allows temporal changes in human population size and distribution and source-sink dynamics in game populations. Using transect and hunting data from two Amazonian sites, we show that the models accurately predict the spatial distribution of primate depletion. To make these methods accessible, we provide software-based tools, including a toolbox for ArcGIS, to assist in managing and mapping the spatial extent of hunting. The proposed application of our models is to allow the quantitative assessment of settlement stabilization approaches to managing hunting in Amazonia.

A plant needs ants like a dog needs fleas: Myrmelachista schumanni ants gall many tree species to create housing.

Hundreds of tropical plant species house ant colonies in specialized chambers called domatia. When, in 1873, Richard Spruce likened plant-ants to fleas and asserted that domatia are ant-created galls, he incited a debate that lasted almost a century. Although we now know that domatia are not galls and that most ant-plant interactions are mutualisms and not parasitisms, we revisit Spruce's suggestion that ants can gall in light of our observations of the plant-ant Myrmelachista schumanni, which creates clearings in the Amazonian rain forest called "supay-chakras," or "devil's gardens." We observed swollen scars on the trunks of nonmyrmecophytic canopy trees surrounding supay-chakras, and within these swellings, we found networks of cavities inhabited by M. schumanni. Here, we summarize the evidence supporting the hypothesis that M. schumanni ants make these galls, and we hypothesize that the adaptive benefit of galling is to increase the amount of nesting space available to M. schumanni colonies.

The sustainability of subsistence hunting by Matsigenka native communities in Manu National Park, Peru.

The presence of indigenous people in tropical parks has fueled a debate over whether people in parks are conservation allies or direct threats to biodiversity. A well-known example is the Matsigenka (or Machiguenga) population residing in Manu National Park in Peruvian Amazonia. Because the exploitation of wild meat (or bushmeat), especially large vertebrates, represents the most significant internal threat to biodiversity in Manu, we analyzed 1 year of participatory monitoring of game offtake in two Matsigenka native communities within Manu Park (102,397 consumer days and 2,089 prey items). We used the Robinson and Redford (1991) index to identify five prey species hunted at or above maximum sustainable yield within the approximately 150-km(2) core hunting zones of the two communities: woolly monkey (Lagothrix lagotricha), spider monkey (Ateles chamek), white-lipped peccary (Tayassu pecari), Razor-billed Currasow (Mitu tuberosa), and Spix's Guan (Penelope jacquacu). There was little or no evidence that any of these five species has become depleted, other than locally, despite a near doubling of the human population since 1988. Hunter-prey profiles have not changed since 1988, and there has been little change in per capita consumption rates or mean prey weights. The current offtake by the Matsigenka appears to be sustainable, apparently due to source-sink dynamics. Source-sink dynamics imply that even with continued human population growth within a settlement, offtake for each hunted species will eventually reach an asymptote. Thus, stabilizing the Matsigenka population around existing settlements should be a primary policy goal for Manu Park.

Demographic threats to the sustainability of Brazil nut exploitation.

A comparative analysis of 23 populations of the Brazil nut tree (Bertholletia excelsa) across the Brazilian, Peruvian, and Bolivian Amazon shows that the history and intensity of Brazil nut exploitation are major determinants of population size structure. Populations subjected to persistent levels of harvest lack juvenile trees less than 60 centimeters in diameter at breast height; only populations with a history of either light or recent exploitation contain large numbers of juvenile trees. A harvesting model confirms that intensive exploitation levels over the past century are such that juvenile recruitment is insufficient to maintain populations over the long term. Without management, intensively harvested populations will succumb to a process of senescence and demographic collapse, threatening this cornerstone of the Amazonian extractive economy.

Three days for weeping: dreams, emotions, and death in the Peruvian Amazon.

Funeral customs and beliefs about the dead among the Matsigenka of Peru reflect great anxiety over the contagion of death and the power of the dead over the living. In this article, these beliefs and practices are interpreted in light of a native theory about emotion. For the Matsigenka, excessive displays of emotion, especially grief, anger, and aggressive sexuality, cause a vicious cycle of unhappiness, social disruption, illness, and death. Moving beyond a culturally particular, symbolic-interpretive perspective, the author also draws on personal experiences both in the field and at home to reflect on the phenomenology of grief across cultures.

Perionychial grafts in trauma and reconstruction.

With careful attention to anatomic repair and by replacing missing tissue with similar tissue, corrections in emergency situations can be accomplished with predictably good results. Even in the most complex of injuries, normal nails are the expectation rather than the surprise endpoint of surgical repair. Improved results in the treatment of chronic nail deformities encourage a bolder surgical stance when patients present with nail deformities. Although more work needs to be done in the field of total nail replacement, a well-performed full-thickness composite graft in carefully selected and prepared patients may be an appropriate solution to a problem that has been ignored too often.