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The cultural keystone species theory predicts plant species that are culturally important, play a role in resource acquisition, fulfil a psycho-socio-cultural function within a given culture, have high use-value, have an associated naming and terminology in a native language, and a high level of species irreplaceability qualify for cultural keystone species designation. This theory was proposed as a framework for understanding relationships between human societies and species that are integral to their culture. A greater understanding of the dynamic roles of cultural keystones in both ecosystem processes and cultural societies is a foundation for facilitating biocultural conservation. Given such important direct conservation implications of the cultural keystone species theory, we reviewed the use of this theoretical framework across the literature to identify new directions for research. Most studies often emphasized the role of cultural keystones species in human societies but failed to provide a robust and reproducible measure of cultural keystone species status or direct test of the predictions of the theory and underemphasized their potential roles in ecosystem processes. To date, no studies that mentioned cultural keystone species tested the predictions of the theory. Only 4.4% provided a measure for cultural keystone status and 47.4% have cited or applied keystone designation to a given species without providing a reproducible measure for cultural keystone species. Studies that provided a measure for cultural keystone species primarily occurred in North America while few of these studies occurred in Australia and Europe with none occurring in Africa. As such, most cultural keystone species have been designated as such qualitatively based on researcher subjectivity while other studies have designated keystone species with quantitative indices of cultural importance, often incorporating researcher biases or measuring a few of the cultural keystone status predictors rather than all of them, indicating a lack of consensus in identifying cultural keystone species. Thus, we pose the need for a paradigm shift toward the development of serious and systematic approaches for keystone designation.

Ethnobiology as a discipline has evolved increasingly to embrace theory-inspired and hypothesis-driven approaches to study why and how local people choose plants and animals they interact with and use for their livelihood. However, testing complex hypotheses or a network of ethnobiological hypotheses is challenging, particularly for data sets with nonindependent observations due to species phylogenetic relatedness or socio-relational links between participants. Further, to account fully for the dynamics of local ecological knowledge, it is important to include the spatially explicit distribution of knowledge, changes in knowledge, and knowledge transmission and use. To promote the use of advanced statistical modelling approaches that address these limitations, we synthesize methodological advances for hypothesis-driven research in ethnobiology while highlighting the need for more figures than tables and more tables than text in ethnobiological literature. We present the ethnobiological motivations for conducting generalized linear mixed-effect modelling, structural equation modelling, phylogenetic generalized least squares, social network analysis, species distribution modelling, and predictive modelling. For each element of the proposed ethnobiologists quantitative toolbox, we present practical applications along with scripts for a widespread implementation. Because these statistical modelling approaches are rarely taught in most ethnobiological programs but are essential for careers in academia or industry, it is critical to promote workshops and short courses focused on these advanced methods. By embracing these quantitative modelling techniques without sacrificing qualitative approaches which provide essential context, ethnobiology will progress further towards an expansive interaction with other disciplines.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Increasing harvest and overexploitation of wild plants for non‐timber forest products can significantly affect population dynamics of harvested populations. While the most common approach to assess the effect of harvest and perturbation of vital rates is focused on the long‐term population growth rate, most management strategies are planned and implemented over the short‐term. We developed an integral projection model to investigate the effects of harvest on the demography and the short‐ and long‐term population dynamics of Banisteriopsis caapi in the Peruvian Amazon rainforest. Harvest had no significant effect on the size‐dependent growth of lianas, but survival rates increased with size. Harvest had a significant negative effect on size‐dependent survival where larger lianas experienced greater mortality rates under high harvest pressure than smaller lianas. In the populations under high harvest pressure, survival of smaller lianas was greater than that of populations with low harvest pressure. Harvest had no significant effect on clonal or sexual reproduction, but fertility was size‐dependent. The long‐term population growth rates of B. caapi populations under high harvest pressure were projected to decline at a rate of 1.3% whereas populations with low harvest pressure are expected to increase at 3.2%. However, before reaching equilibrium, over the short‐term, all B. caapi populations were in decline by 26% (high harvested population) and (low harvested population) 20.4% per year. Elasticity patterns were dominated by survival of larger lianas irrespective of harvest treatments. Life table response experiment analyses indicated that high harvest caused the 6% reduction in population growth rates by significantly reducing the survival of large lianas and increasing the survival‐growth of smaller lianas including vegetative reproductive individuals. Synthesis and applications. This study emphasizes how important it is for management strategies for B. caapi lianas experiencing anthropogenic harvest to prioritize the survival of larger size lianas and vegetative reproducing individuals, particularly in increased harvested systems often prone to multiple stressors. From an applied conservation perspective, our findings illustrate the importance of both prospective and retrospective perturbation analyses in population growth rates in understanding the population dynamics of lianas in general in response to human‐induced disturbance.