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February 8, 12:00 p.m.
Presented by Professor Will McClatchey, University of Hawaii
This research tests a hypothesis that is built upon the assumption that samples of cultural knowledge can serve as appropriate scale measures of biodiversity for within-hotspot distribution analysis. Correlation between ethnographic and botanical research methods is used to evaluate the hypothesis. Research conducted in Northeast Thailand will be presented as an example.
Will McClatchey grew up on the White Mountain Reservation in Arizona before his family moved to Oregon where he finished college at Oregon State University earning B.S. degrees in Anthropology and Pharmacy. He worked as a community and consultant pharmacist for ten years during which time he earned an M.S. in Botany (Ethnobotany) from Brigham Young University and a Ph.D. in Botany (Evolutionary Biology) from the University of Florida. He is currently Professor of Botany at the University of Hawaii. Dr. McClatchey’s research addresses hypotheses about the evolution of patterns of human interactions with plants and ecosystems. While his past research was largely conducted in the South and Western Pacific region his current research is taking place in Southeast Asia where he is studying relationships between distribution patterns of human knowledge of biodiversity and actual biodiversity.