White sage ( Salvia apiana Jeps.) is a culturally significant plant for the Kumeyaay people of northern Baja California and southern California. Increasing global demand has intensified its exploitation, raising concerns about habitat degradation and the erosion of Local Ecological Knowledge (LEK). This study evaluates the impacts of white sage extraction on sagebrush cultural landscapes through a 6-month collaborative ethnography (2021–2022) in the Kumeyaay village of San José de la Zorra (SJZ), Mexico. Using informal conversations, participant observation, and dialogue with key community members and neighboring Kumeyaay villages, we documented traditional knowledge related to white sage, including harvesting practices and cultural uses. The research began with conversations with community elders and local authorities recognized for their extensive LEK, who introduced the researcher to other knowledgeable individuals. Our findings confirm that white sage is central to Kumeyaay LEK, with documented uses spanning medicinal, spiritual, and practical domains. However, habitat loss driven by land dispossession, commercial overharvesting, urbanization, and climate change threatens both the plant and its associated knowledge system. Spatial analysis of the broader sagebrush ecosystem reveals the loss of traditionally managed landscapes due to urban conversion, further exacerbating ecological decline. Despite these pressures, Kumeyaay continue to employ traditional management strategies, such as rotational harvesting aligned with the plant's reproductive cycle. These findings highlight the importance of Indigenous management practices and support integrated conservation approaches combining Indigenous knowledge, ecological science, and policy frameworks to protect white sage, its habitat, and the cultural traditions it sustains.

Fermented beverages made from cactus fruits hold deep historical, cultural, and nutritional significance in arid and semi-arid regions of Mexico and the United States. Despite their longstanding role in local diets and food systems, these beverages remain understudied in ethnobiological research. One example is colonche, a traditional beverage made by open fermentation of prickly pear fruits, particularly Opuntia streptacantha , in the Central Mexican Plateau. Similarly, the Comcaac ( Seri ) people of the Sonoran Desert prepare imám hamaax (pitahaya wine) from Pachycereus pringlei fruit. This study combines ethnographic and microbiological approaches to investigate the production of these two beverages and their associated microbial communities. We documented traditional knowledge about harvesting, preparation, and fermentation practices in both regions. Forty-three yeast isolates were obtained from these fermented beverages, representing 12 species from 10 genera. These included both Saccharomyces and non- Saccharomyces yeast species, such as Kluyveromyces marxianus , Zygosaccharomyces bailii , Torulaspora delbrueckii , Meyerozyma guilliermondii , and Rhodotorula mucilaginosa . We observed regional differences in yeast composition, reflecting local ecological conditions and fermentation practices. This study contributes to the ethnobiology of traditional fermentations by documenting the microbial and cultural diversity of cactus-based beverages and highlighting the depth of the traditional ecological knowledge that sustains them. Our findings suggest that these fermentation systems provide valuable insights into microbial management, signs of domestication, biocultural resilience, and food heritage in arid environments.

Exposure to one's ancestral language fosters specific perspectives on the ecosystems that have sustained the speakers of that language. Ethnobotany highlights the ways in which groups understand their environment and their place within it. This article considers the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana, who have been reclaiming and revitalizing one of their community's ancestral languages for over a decade. Concurrently, a group of tribal members and collaborators has been steadily developing a bilingual Tunica 1 -English ethnobotany guidebook for the past five years. This guidebook complements ecosystem restoration efforts currently underway on the tribe's reservation, including projects promoting the management and harvest of resources according to Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK). This knowledge reflects familiarity with a range of habitats including river bottoms, prairies, foothills, and the Gulf Coastal Plain. Furthermore, it displays legacies of ongoing contact with other Indigenous groups along with European colonizers. Political pressure, land encroachment, and language shift have undermined a core basis for Tunica-Biloxi ethnobotanical practice. As a result, our knowledge is fragmented. In this article, we showcase the ethnobotany working group's methodology, which asserts historical uses of plant resources while encouraging the creativity necessary to fill gaps left in the documentary record. Recognizing the synergies between language revitalization and ethnobotany—and leveraging them in theory and practice—provides a powerful tool for negotiating and navigating borderlands in order to imagine more vibrant futures.

Agave is a plant through which people express care and concern for the Sonoran Desert, a biodiverse ecosystem that spans the border between Sonora, Mexico, and Arizona, United States. At the Tucson Agave Summit, a binational gathering for academic, business, and community exchange, participants discussed the growing environmental impact of human development on agave, mirroring larger concerns about research, culture, and commerce. However, obtaining travel visas proved difficult for Mexicans due to longstanding political inequalities exacerbated by post-COVID travel backlogs. In response, the 2024 AS was relocated to Álamos, Sonora. This shift invited two important questions: How is agave being used, valued, and imagined across different communities in the Sonoran Desert? And how do those conversations—about environment, culture, and knowledge—change depending on who is able to speak, and where? In exploring these questions, multiple roles for agave emerged: as a culturally significant plant in arid lands, as a marker of agricultural expertise, and as a shared point of connection across borders, disciplines, and communities.

Choromytilus chorus virtually vanished from most Peruvian archaeological sites about 1000 BC. This species’ disappearance is significant because Choromytilus chorus is one of the most recognizable mollusks in the archaeological remains of coastal Peru because of its large size and rich purple color. In this study we investigate the choro mussel, which was a highly valued food source, a raw material for fishhooks and other fishing gear, and a special ritual item in prehistoric times. We look at inconsistencies in reports of its range, habitat, and ecology to explore reasons for the major shift southward of the species' northern limits at the end of the Initial Period (1000 BC), a significant cultural boundary. We identify biological, ecological, and cultural factors that acted together to bring about the sudden extinction of the choro mussel along much of the Peruvian coast. Paramount among these are human overexploitation and periodic environmental changes related to the El Niño phenomenon.

For centuries, global political economic relations have been informed by a model of growth premised on transforming plants, animals, knowledge, labor, water, and land into scarce commodities. Growing production, consumption, and profit remain unquestioned goods across many sectors of contemporary life. Through our evolving relationships with colonialism, capitalism, and Western science, ethnobiologists are increasingly interrogating the political and economic consequences of our interdisciplinary scholarship. Thus, we offer a valuable perspective on a diverse ecological and social science agenda: degrowth. In this review essay, I explore how ethnobiology might contribute to degrowth research through its empirical approach, alternative valuation, focus on relationships over commodification, emphasis on local context, and recognition that humans shape and are shaped through the environments in which we live. Ethnobiologists meticulously describe systems of social, ecological, and economic interaction. In doing so, we fill a need for studies that document life under degrowth conditions. Similarly, degrowth research offers a vocabulary for ethnobiologists to recognize how we make a unique, data-rich contribution to discussions of political economy and political ecology. Ethnobiologists and degrowth researchers have much to say to each other through our shared commitment to action-oriented, imaginative research that explores socioecological relationships of care and interconnection.

Socio-ecological assessment frameworks like ecosystem services and nature's contributions to people help understanding complex human-nature couplings, but each with their own caveats. There has been little work done on understanding how human-nature couplings evolve through multiple generations, and how that impacts socio-ecological resilience. Mangroves, coupling high biological conservation values and various benefits provided to coastal communities, are ideal social-ecological systems to explore generational human-nature couplings. This study uses the Western Indian Ocean island of Mauritius to highlight the socio-political and cultural values attributed to local practices in mangroves. Through a socio-anthropological approach, information was collected on human practices in mangroves, their social, ontological and political relevance for mangroves-users, their local ecological knowledge (LEK), as well as the perceived changes in mangroves-human couplings. Two free listing methods on mangroves perception and linguistic diversity associated to fished species were also implemented in four coastal villages. The results show that mangroves are associated to multiple social, political and ontological values in Mauritius, notably cultural heritage values, LEK maintenance, matrilineal knowledge transmission systems, linguistic diversity and coastal socio-cultural activities. The presence of mangroves in small-scale seafood production systems also highlights their role in maintaining traditional coastal livelihoods. The narratives of changes within mangroves socio-ecosystems are either maintained or evolving through generations, as are the places of defined actors in coastal communities. Our findings suggest that without formal integration of relational values of mangrove at policy and governance levels, their decline will further produce economic and social insecurity for stewards and users of the coast.

This ethnobotanical study, conducted in rural settler and Guarani populations sharing similar environments within the Yabotí Biosphere Reserve's area of influence in Misiones, Argentina, analyzes and compares local firewood utilization practices and the landscape associated with these practices. We surveyed the general characteristics of the managed landscapes, categorized the observed environments according to management intensity, identified firewood collection environments, and measured the distance of these environments from the peridomestic space. Furthermore, we compared the strategies employed for firewood selection and the acquisition methods. Using ethnobotanical techniques and statistical analysis, we identified relationships between ecological and sociocultural variables and groupings of firewood species with their ecological attributes. The results show that both groups shape the landscape through productive activities, primarily agriculture, and manage resources differently based on their cultural characteristics, socioeconomic profile, and energy needs. Differences were found in collection strategies and environments. Settlers cut green, native, and exotic species into more distant locations, while the Guaranies collect fallen, dry, native species near their homes. Settlers use mechanical tools to extract large-sized species, while the Guaranies employ manual tools for cutting and gathering. Resource and environment management are guided by cultural requirements and specific decisions to control resource availability. The study highlights the importance of understanding traditional practices for the sustainable management of woody resources.

Selling pulque requires extensive knowledge of its handling, mainly learned through oral communication. Its uses and related customs have been little described outside production sites in Tlaxcala. Therefore, this work has documented the traditional knowledge of pulque handling at the points of sale (POS) in Tlaxcala, one of the main producers of this beverage in Mexico. Economic data on the sale of pulque and the descriptions of sellers and customers are also provided. Semistructured interviews were conducted in 131 POS in 93% of Tlaxcala's municipalities using snowball sampling. The results describe management activities in the POS of pulque, aguamiel, and cured pulque, such as cold or room temperature storage. Pulque is sold within most of Tlaxcala, but its production and sale are greatest in the northern part. Pulque sales constitute a job opportunity for adults, mostly men who sell in pulquerías (63%). Pulque is sold by producers (64% > 60 years old) in their homes (50%) and pulquerías (22%). Half the pulque is resold mainly in pulquerías (57%) and homes (12%). A total of 84% of the establishments are less than 20 years old, and service is provided every day, with working hours exceeding 7 h. The price of pulque varies widely, since it can be sold from $0.26 to $5.16 per liter. This variability is possibly associated with the type of POS. Customers prefer sweet pulque, and more than half the consumers are male (55%). This work is a guideline for future state censuses of pulque production and sale.

The use of insects and their hosts is essential in Mesoamerican bio-culture. Preserving this rich heritage and associated biodiversity is a multifaceted process. The first steps involve correctly identifying the used species, documenting its basic ecology, and the collecting and consumption methods. In the Monte Albán archeological site, Oaxaca, Mexico, spanning 13 centuries of pre-Hispanic occupation, local people still practice traditional native species utilization. One of the most used insect species is the cigarras . We sequenced a 648 bp region of this edible cicada's cytochrome oxidase gene. These DNA sequences and morphological studies concur that the cicada used is Quesada gigas (Olivier 1905) (Homoptera). People collect cicadas from April to May and cook them for self-consumption. Based on archeological and etymological evidence of one of their major hosts, the guaje , Leucaena esculenta (DC.) Benth (Fabaceae), the cicada consumption likely has pre-Hispanic roots. The cicada and the guaje pods are rich in proteins, probably due to the guaje's symbiotic association with nitrogen-fixing bacteria. The pods are collected for self-consumption during winter. Thus, the guaje–cigarra system provides humans with two protein sources during the dry season at different times. Q. gigas is considered a pest of some crops, illustrating different people's contrasting perceptions of the same insect. The Quesada consumption in Oaxaca might be part of a pre-Hispanic symbiosis between the guaje and humans and an example of how a potential insect pest can be used as an alternative protein source. Monte Albán is a biodiversity and pre-Hispanic traditions reservoir worth preserving.