OBJETIVO GENERAL

The significant overall loss of knowledge we found due to plant extinction occurred across the board regardless of socio-demographic variables. This indicates that though an individual may know more/less than another, their relative advantage/disadvantage within the community holds stable even as overall knowledge on the community level declines following an

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extinction event. Various socio-demographic variables (i.e., sex, age, ethnicity, and educational level) can help to explain the disparity of plant knowledge individuals possess within a

community (Voeks and Leony 2004; Albuquerque et al. 2011). But, like other studies that have noted the synergistic effect of socio-demographic variables (Souto and Ticktin 2012; Brandt et al. 2013), we found that the effect of one variable (e.g., ethnicity) largely depended on the level of others (e.g., education or orchid activity level). This shows why it is important to understand the specific context in which the effects of a variable matter for a given study and test them appropriately.

2.4.3.1. Sex

Due to different culturally-defined gender roles, many studies show that men and women can possess different kinds of knowledge, so the type of knowledge a study investigates matters (Albuquerque et al. 2011; Souto and Ticktin 2012; Brandt et al. 2013). However, our data showed that the orchid knowledge held by women and men was not significantly different (Figure 2.3), and this was true across all knowledge types (Figure 2.5). This indicates that orchid knowledge is not a culturally-defined domain of a single gender in our study region, and this further supports findings of Torres-Avilez et al. (2016) whose meta-analysis found no gender-based disparity in knowledge. Nevertheless, during the interviews, many female participants indicated that orchid knowledge was a male domain, with comments like “we women usually never go to see [orchids in the wild] so we do not understand,” “I have not seen [orchids] before, but the men say they have seen them before,” and “my brother [made a lot of money] selling orchids, but we women do not usually deal with these things.” These comments were likely expressions of modesty, since anecdotally, during interviews, women seemed less likely to feign knowledge, readily admitting when they did not know rather than guessing or pretending.

2.4.3.2. Age

Our data showed that the middle age group (35-50 years old) knew significantly more about orchids (globally) than the older and younger age groups (Figure 2.3). This is contrary to our hypothesis that older individuals would know more (Voeks and Leony 2004; Srithi et al.

2009; Albuquerque et al. 2011). However, when considering the specific-knowledge scores (Figure 2.4), several possible explanations emerge for this trend. In keeping with our hypothesis,

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the oldest age group (>50) knew significantly more than the younger groups for plant

identification (ID) and orchid cultural knowledge (OCK), while the middle age group (35-50) only knew more for local ecological (LEK) and business/market knowledge (BMK). Considering that the middle group came to adulthood during the height of the orchid economic valuation boom in the late 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s, the economic incentive to learn how to

find/locate orchids (LEK) and sell for profit (BMK) likely caused them to outpace their culture’s previous baseline for orchid knowledge acquisition. However, the older age group’s advantage in OCK may be due to their longer time studying it, while their advantage with plant ID seems to derive from their familiarity with now extinct orchids and with the previous baseline of wild orchids in flower.

Considering the severity of knowledge loss within a community following biological species extinction, the negative impact of species extinction on cultural knowledge may also be exacerbated generationally. As with linguistic theories related to ‘language shifts’ and ‘language revitalization’ (Dwyer 2011), older generations avoid passing on knowledge after it is no longer seen as necessary for the younger generations. Similarly, youth cease acquiring and retaining knowledge that is no longer seen by them as valuable (Voeks and Leony 2004; Müller-Schwarze 2006; Srithi et al. 2009; Reyes-García et al. 2013). Moreover, an individual’s length of residency within a community can sometimes be a better predictor of certain knowledge types than their age (Souto and Ticktin 2012; Gandolfo and Hanazaki 2014). Thus, the effects of the severe community fragmentation in Puge caused by rural to urban migration (dǎgōng) likely amplify these generational differences.

Combined with the new “baseline” for wild orchid ecology in our study area in terms of orchids primarily being small root-sprouts and decreasing local recollection of floral

characteristics, these various factors that contribute to a divergence in generational understanding of orchids may yield a cultural “bottleneck effect.” Population bottlenecks are well-studied in terms of conservation biology (e.g., inbreeding depression and minimum viable populations) and biological species resilience (Cozzolino et al. 2003; Peery et al. 2012), as well as language extinction (Mishler 2001; Dwyer 2011), but the interrelatedness of the different types of

diversities indicates there may also be a “bottleneck effect” of sorts for knowledge transmission

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making communities less able to adapt to environmental changes (Voeks and Leony 2004; Srithi et al. 2009; Souto and Ticktin 2012).

2.4.3.3. Education and orchid activity levels

Overall, participants with a college education had significantly higher global knowledge scores than those with no formal schooling (Figure 2.3), which is contrary to studies that found a negative correlation between advanced education and traditional knowledge (Voeks and Leony 2004; Srithi et al. 2009). When specific knowledge is examined (Figure 2.7), no difference is found between educational levels for either plant ID knowledge or local ecological knowledge.

Yet, college-educated participants did know significantly more about orchid business/market knowledge than those with only a primary school education. Since college-educated participants also knew significantly more orchid cultural knowledge than all other educational levels,

acquisition of this knowledge type may be aided by advanced formal education and would be less prevalent in communities lacking access to higher education. Yet, this advantage may not necessarily be due to length of education, but rather the location or type (vocational versus liberal arts) of the education that matters. For example, there are no colleges or universities in Puge County, so all college-educated individuals had to travel to cities to study. The advantages offered in cities, including cultural institutions such as universities, libraries, museums, and botanical gardens, may be particularly important for this type of knowledge. Anecdotally, several participants associated their lack of orchid knowledge with the type of education they had

received. For example, one participant with a middle school education said “When we went to school, we studied every day how to build things and be farmers. We never learned about orchids.” Another stated, “We never learned this stuff in school.”

Being active in the orchid trade (a form of informal education) seems to partially answer why an individual who knows more than others before an extinction event would still know relatively more after the plant is lost even as knowledge declines overall. As hypothesized, we found individuals active in the orchid trade had significantly higher global knowledge scores than those who were not active (Figure 2.3). They also had significantly higher knowledge scores for all four specific knowledges (Figure 2.8). Thus, the negative impact of extinction on knowledge is exacerbated when one no longer has access to the plants in any form. Due to orchid

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activity’s influence on knowledge acquisition, after an extinction event knowledge persists longer in communities where hobbyists grow locally extinct orchids in their own collections.