Abstract
Diversity of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) created on the edges of culture is the key to the sustainability and resilience of humankind. We recorded wild food TEK among seven autochthonous linguistic communities living on both sides of the Greater Caucasus Range, documenting the use of 72 wild taxa as well as remarkable diversity of both taxa and uses among the communities. The most isolated communities form distinct biocultural refugia for wild food plants and their uses, but the sustainability of such communities is under threat due to depopulation, and their TEK has already entered into decline. While isolation may have been responsible for the preservation of food biocultural refugia, it may no longer be enough for the passive preservation of the food refugia in the study area in the future. More proactive steps have to be taken in order to ensure the sustainability of TEK of the study communities and beyond.
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Acknowledgements
We are thankful to study participants who shared with authors their LEK/LGK. To the University of Gastronomic Sciences and Ca’ Foscari University of Vence for having funded the field study. This research has made use of the visualization from BioVinci version 1.1.5, r20181005 developed by BioTuring Inc., San Diego California USA, www.bioturing.com.
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Ethical approval was granted by the Ethical Committee of the University of Gastronomic Sciences.
Herbarium data
The collected voucher specimens are deposited at the Herbarium of the Department of Environmental Sciences, Informatics, and Statistics of the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy (UVV), bearing herbarium numbers UVV.EB.AZ01–73). Dried plant samples were also accepted if offered by the interviewees (deposited with numbers UVV.EB.AZD01-21).
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Communicated by Daniel Sanchez Mata.
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Sõukand, R., Pieroni, A. Resilience in the mountains: biocultural refugia of wild food in the Greater Caucasus Range, Azerbaijan. Biodivers Conserv 28, 3529–3545 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-019-01835-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-019-01835-3