Conhecimento ecológico tradicional e domesticação de árvores na Amazônia brasileira

Abstract

For thousands of years, Indigenous peoples and local communities have used, managed, and domesticated plants, and possess vast ecological knowledge about biodiversity. In Amazonia, an estimated 84 % of trees and palms are useful to humans. However, the livelihoods and knowledge of Amazonian traditional communities may be compromised by advancing environmental threats that cause land-use change and biodiversity loss. In this thesis, we analyze how environmental threats (deforestation, mining, and fires) and personal characteristics of local specialists influence some components of traditional ecological knowledge related to forests; and we highlight people's interactions with piquia (Caryocar villosum), a typical tree of terra firme forests, with wide distribution in the biome, looking for evidence of its domestication. From 2015 to 2019, we interviewed 208 local specialists from 27 communities within or near ten protected areas in Brazilian Amazonia. We recorded 795 useful ethnospecies. Using Mixed Effects Models, we found that environmental threats had smaller effects on traditional ecological knowledge than personal characteristics. People with more forest experience and men tended to cite more used and traded ethnospecies. Specialists living in communities influenced by mining cited fewer used ethnospecies, and those from more deforested communities cited proportionally more cultivation. To investigate people's relationships with piquia, we analyzed 162 interviews about the uses and management of the species, mapped and compiled records of its occurrence and abundance, characterized its genetic diversity and structure, and reconstructed phylogenetic history based on genotyping by sequencing of 42 trees sampled in 11 areas. Piquia has great versatility of uses and management, with many management practices related to domestication. We found more occurrences, higher abundance, and slightly more genetic diversity in Eastern Brazilian Amazonia, suggesting that this is the origin of piquia domestication. Trees in the Western Brazilian Amazon constituted a monophyletic group, with recent divergence, around 9-10 thousand years ago. Phylogeny suggests that piquia, after undergoing selection in the East, was dispersed by humans to the West of Brazilian Amazonia. The history of the plants in Amazonia is linked to the trajectories of the Indigenous Peoples and local communities. They were responsible for the dispersal of piquia over long distances, and the process of domestication of the species, which began in the past, is still ongoing. These people and their knowledge resist environmental threats and must be considered in proposals for new economic models that seek to maintain standing forests and their traditional uses. To contribute to the dissemination and appreciation of the ecological knowledge and long-term history of the communities that are partners in this thesis, didactic materials of different kinds containing researched elements were prepared, presented, and distributed in the communities.