Relationship between Use Value and Ecological Importance of Floristic Resources of Seasonally Dry Tropical Forest in the Balsas River Basin, México

Abstract

Relationship between Use Value and Ecological Importance of Floristic Resources of Seasonally Dry Tropical Forest in the Balsas River Basin, Mexico. The use of seasonally dry tropical forest in the Balsas River Basin, Mexico was utilized as a model to study the relationship between the use value and the ecological importance of wild flora in nine study sites that have an indigenous-Mestizo cultural gradient. Ethnobotanical data from the area were used to obtain the use value per species and correlate it with the ecological importance value of the species found in 0.9 ha. We test the hypothesis that the most used species are the most ecologically important and that this relationship is affected by the changing cultural process that occurs in Mexican rural communities. We registered 320 species, 56.25 % of which are useful and fall into twelve use categories. The study sites showed similar percentages of useful plants. We found relationships between the use value of the species and of the main categories (medicinal, construction, firewood, and food) with the ecological importance value. The frequency was the ecological attribute that determined the use of species in the main categories of use, while the density and dominance attributes were related respectively to the medicinal and food categories. There were differences regarding cultural groups. Indigenous groups mentioned the use of medicinal, edible, and firewood plants more frequently, whereas the Mestizo group pointed out more species used for construction.