Persistent effects of pre-Columbian plant domestication on Amazonian forest composition

C. Levis , C. Costa , F. Bongers , M. Peña-Claros , C. Clement , A. Junqueira , E. Neves , E. Tamanaha , F. Figueiredo , R. Salomão (1) , C. Castilho , E. Magnusson (2) , O. Phillips , E. Guevara (3) , Daniel Sabatier (4) , Jean-François Molino (4) , D. López , M. Mendoza , C. Pitman , A. Duque , P. Núñez Vargas , C. Zartman , R. Vasquez , A. Andrade (5) , J. I B Camargo (6) , R. Feldpausch , W. Laurance , F. Laurance , J. Killeen , E. Nascimento , C. Montero , B. Mostacedo , I. Amaral , C. Guimarães Vieira , R. Brienen , H. Castellanos , J. Terborgh (5) , M. Carim , R. Guimarães , L. de Souza Coelho , F. Matos , F. Wittmann , F. Mogollón , G. Damasco , N. Dávila , R. García-Villacorta , E. Coronado (7) , T. Emilio , D. Andrade , J. Schietti , P. Souza , N. Targhetta , A. Comiskey , S. Marimon , H. Marimon , D. Neill (8) , A. Alonso (9) , L. Arroyo (10) , F. Carvalho (11) , C. Souza , F. Dallmeier , M. Pansonato , F. Duivenvoorden , A. Fine , R. Stevenson (12) , A. Araujo-Murakami , C. Aymard C. , C. Baraloto (5) , D. Amaral , Julien Engel , W. Henkel , P. Maas , Pascal Petronelli (13) , J. Revilla , J. Stropp (5) , D. Daly , R. Gribel , M. Paredes , M. Silveira (14) , R. Thomas-Caesar (5) , R. Baker (15) , F. da Silva (16) , L. Ferreira (17) , C. Peres , M. Silman , C. Cerón , C. Valverde , A. Di Fiore , M. Jimenez (18) , C. Mora (19) , M. Toledo , M. Barbosa , C. Matos (20) , C. Arboleda , E. Farias , A. Fuentes , J. Guillaumet , P. Jørgensen , Y. Malhi (21) , I. Andrade , F. Phillips , A. Prieto (22) , A. Rudas (23) , A. Ruschel , N. Silva , P. von Hildebrand , A. Vos , E. Zent , S. Zent , B. Cintra , M. Nascimento , A. Oliveira (24) , H. Ramírez-Angulo (5) , F. Ramos , G. Rivas (25) , J. Schöngart (26) , R. Sierra , M. Tirado , G. van Der Heijden , E. Torre , O. Wang , R. Young (27) , C. Baider , A. Cano , W. Farfan-Rios , C. Ferreira (28) , B. Hoffman , C. Mendoza (29) , I. Mesones , A. Torre , M. Medina , R. van Andel , D. Villarroel , R. Zagt , M. Alexiades , H. Balslev , K. Garcia-Cabrera , T. Gonzales (30) , L. Hernandez (31) , I. Huamantupa-Chuquimaco , A. Manzatto , W. Milliken , W. Cuenca , S. Pansini , D. Pauletto , F. Arevalo , F. Costa (32) , F. Sampaio (33) , E. Giraldo , E. Sandoval , L. Gamarra , C. Vela , H. ter Steege (5)

1 MPEG - Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi [Belém, Brésil]
2 University of Iceland [Reykjavik]
3 Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria, Pergamino, Argentina
4 UMR AMAP - Botanique et Modélisation de l'Architecture des Plantes et des Végétations
5 Chercheur indépendant
6 Observatorio Nacional [Rio de Janeiro]
7 ICMol - Instituto de Ciencia Molecular
8 Herbario Nacional del Ecuador
9 Applied Tumor Virology
10 Museo Noel Kempff Mercado
11 Neuro-Dol - Neuro-Dol
12 UQAM - Université du Québec à Montréal = University of Québec in Montréal
13 UMR ECOFOG - Ecologie des forêts de Guyane
14 Departamento de Ciências da Natureza
15 Central Science Laboratory
16 Association Euratom/CFN/IST
17 CERN [Genève]
18 UMET - Unité Matériaux et Transformations - UMR 8207
19 Dipartimento di Scienze degli Alimenti
20 ULB - Hôpital Erasme [Bruxelles]
21 OUCE - Oxford University Centre for the Environment
22 ISA - Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering [Sevilla]
23 Instituto de Ciencias Naturales
24 IPHT - Institut de Physique Théorique - UMR CNRS 3681
25 inconnu
26 MPIC - Max Planck Institute for Chemistry
27 University of Adelaide
28 PUC-Rio - Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro [Brasil] = Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro [Brazil] = Université catholique pontificale de Rio de Janeiro [Brésil]
29 ULA - Universidad de Los Andes [Mérida, Venezuela]
30 Universidad de Salamanca
31 UC - Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
32 FEM - Edmund Mach Foundation
33 INPA - Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia = National Institute of Amazonian Research

The marks of prehistoric human societies on tropical forests can still be detected today. Levis et al. performed a basin-wide comparison of plant distributions, archaeological sites, and environmental data. Plants domesticated by pre-Columbian peoples are much more likely to be dominant in Amazonian forests than other species. Furthermore, forests close to archaeological sites often have a higher abundance and richness of domesticated species. Thus, modern-day Amazonian tree communities across the basin remain largely structured by historical human use.Science, this issue p. 925The extent to which pre-Columbian societies altered Amazonian landscapes is hotly debated. We performed a basin-wide analysis of pre-Columbian impacts on Amazonian forests by overlaying known archaeological sites in Amazonia with the distributions and abundances of 85 woody species domesticated by pre-Columbian peoples. Domesticated species are five times more likely than nondomesticated species to be hyperdominant. Across the basin, the relative abundance and richness of domesticated species increase in forests on and around archaeological sites. In southwestern and eastern Amazonia, distance to archaeological sites strongly influences the relative abundance and richness of domesticated species. Our analyses indicate that modern tree communities in Amazonia are structured to an important extent by a long history of plant domestication by Amazonian peoples.

Mots clés: Plant domestication; Pre-columbian archaeology; Amazony

Domaines: Systématique, phylogénie et taxonomie; Ecosystèmes; Botanique; Biodiversité et Ecologie

C. Levis, C. Costa, F. Bongers, M. Peña-Claros, C. Clement, et al.. Persistent effects of pre-Columbian plant domestication on Amazonian forest composition. Science, 2017, 355 (6328), pp.925-931. ⟨10.1126/science.aal0157⟩. ⟨hal-02191535⟩