Browsing by Autor "William R. Leonard"

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Adult knowledge of wild plants associated with limited delayed health and nutritional benefits for children or adults in the face of external change: A yearly panel (2003−2010) study among Tsimane’, an indigenous Amazonian society in Bolivia
(Elsevier BV, 2024) Ricardo Godoy; Tomás Huanca; William R. Leonard; Thomas W. McDade; Victòria Reyes-García; Asher Y. Rosinger; Susan Tanner
Adult obesity: Panel study from native Amazonians
(Elsevier BV, 2012) Wu Zeng; Dan T. A. Eisenberg; Karla Rubio‐Jovel; Eduardo A. Undurraga; Colleen Nyberg; Susan Tanner; Victòria Reyes-García; William R. Leonard; Juliana Castaño; Tomás Huanca
Assortative mating and offspring well-being: theory and empirical findings from a native Amazonian society in Bolivia
(Elsevier BV, 2008) Ricardo Godoy; Dan T. A. Eisenberg; Victòria Reyes-García; Tomás Huanca; William R. Leonard; Thomas W. McDade; Susan Tanner
Brief Communication: Does Integration to the Market Threaten Agricultural Diversity? Panel and Cross-Sectional Data From a Horticultural-Foraging Society in the Bolivian Amazon
(Springer Science+Business Media, 2004) Vincent Vadez; Victoria Reyes-Garc�a; Ricardo Godoy; V. Lilian Apaza; Elizabeth Byron; Tomás Huanca; William R. Leonard; Eddy P�rez; David Wilkie
Can We Trust an Adult's Estimate of Parental School Attainment? Disentangling Social Desirability Bias and Random Measurement Error
(SAGE Publishing, 2008) Ricardo Godoy; Victòria Reyes-García; Susan Tanner; William R. Leonard; Thomas W. McDade; Tomás Huanca
Researchers often need to know the parental school attainment of adult subjects. When researchers cannot ask parents about their school attainment, they must ask adult offspring about the school attainment of their parents. We assess the accuracy of answers provided by adults about the school attainment of their parents with data from a native Amazonian society in Bolivia (Tsimane'). Offspring overestimate the school attainment of their parents. They also report inaccurately other human capital attributes of their parents (e.g., writing skills, fluency speaking Spanish, practical indigenous knowledge of medicinal plants). Results mesh with findings from the United States about the lack of reliability of adults' self-reports about parental school attainment and with prior research among the Tsimane' suggesting significant misreporting of other outcomes (e.g., age, income, parental height).
Cash Cropping, Farm Technologies, and Deforestation: What are the Connections? A Model with Empirical Data from the Bolivian Amazon
(Society for Applied Anthropology, 2008) Vincent Vadez; Victòria Reyes-García; Tomás Huanca; William R. Leonard
Research suggests that cash cropping is positively associated with deforestation.We use three-year data (2000-2002, inclusive) from 493 households to estimate the association between cash cropping rice and deforestation.Doubling the area sown with rice is associated with a 26-30 percent increase in the area of forest cleared during the next cropping season.We simulate the changes in rice cultivation to reach a daily income level of $1/person from cash cropping rice.We find that within 10 years: (1) the amount of deforestation would triple, (2) work requirements would exceed household's labor availability, and (3) fallows duration would decrease two-fold.To avoid the increase of deforestation from cash cropping requires increasing productivity, diversification of income sources, or both.
Changes in adult well-being and economic inequalities: An exploratory observational longitudinal study (2002–2010) of micro-level trends among Tsimane’, a small-scale rural society of Indigenous People in the Bolivian Amazon
(Elsevier BV, 2024) Ricardo Godoy; Jonathan Bauchet; Jere R. Behrman; Tomás Huanca; William R. Leonard; Victòria Reyes-García; Asher Y. Rosinger; Susan Tanner; Eduardo A. Undurraga; Ariela Zycherman
Correlates of delay-discount rates: Evidence from Tsimane' Amerindians of the Bolivian rain forest
(Elsevier BV, 2002) Kris N. Kirby; Ricardo Godoy; Victòria Reyes-García; Elizabeth Byron; Lilian Apaza; William R. Leonard; Eddy Pérez-Then; Vincent Vadez; David Wilkie
Cultural transmission of ethnobotanical knowledge and skills: an empirical analysis from an Amerindian society
(Elsevier BV, 2009) Victòria Reyes-García; James Broesch; Laura Calvet‐Mir; Nuria Fuentes‐Peláez; Thomas W. McDade; Sorush Parsa; Susan Tanner; Tomás Huanca; William R. Leonard; Maria Ruth Martínez-Rodríguez
Diet and nutritional status among cassava producing agriculturalists of coastal Ecuador
(Taylor & Francis, 1994) William R. Leonard; Kathleen M. DeWalt; Jorge E. Uquillas; Billie R. DeWalt
This paper investigates the correlates of dietary consumption and nutritional status among a sample of 43 cassava producing households of coastal Ecuador. Household energy consumption in the sample is marginally adequate and is substantially higher than that observed among coffee producing farmers from the same region (2459 vs. 1851 kcal/day). Cassava producing farmers also derive a much larger share of their diet from home produced foods (34% vs. 24% of energy intake). The more varied and adequate diet of the cassava sample is clearly reflected in children's nutritional status. Children of the cassava sample have significantly higher height‐for‐age, weight‐for‐age and mid arm circumference measures than their counterparts from the coffee sample. Within the cassava sample, livestock ownership and per capita expenditures on market foods are the strongest and most consistent predictors of children's nutritional status. Animal production appears to be particularly important since it is largely under female control and it provides both income and high quality food for home consumption. Overall, better dietary and nutritional status of the cassava sample relative to the coffee sample appears to be associated with a more adequate balance between income generation and subsistence production.
Do Markets Worsen Economic Inequalities? Kuznets in the Bush
(Springer Science+Business Media, 2004) Ricardo Godoy; Michael Gurven; Elizabeth Byron; Victòria Reyes-García; James Keough; Vincent Vadez; David Wilkie; William R. Leonard; Lilian Apaza; Tomás Huanca
Do the aged and knowledgeable men enjoy more prestige? A test of predictions from the prestige-bias model of cultural transmission
(Elsevier BV, 2008) Victòria Reyes-García; José Luís Molina; James Broesch; Laura Calvet‐Mir; Tomás Huanca; Judith Saus; Susan Tanner; William R. Leonard; Thomas W. McDade
Does civilization cause discontentment among indigenous Amazonians? Test of empirical data from the Tsimane’ of Bolivia
(Elsevier BV, 2010) Ricardo Godoy; Elizabeth Zeinalova; Victòria Reyes-García; Tomás Huanca; Holly Kosiewicz; William R. Leonard; Susan Tanner
Does the Future Affect the Present? The Effects of Future Weather on the Current Collection of Planted Crops and Wildlife in a Native Amazonian Society of Bolivia
(Springer Science+Business Media, 2009) Ricardo Godoy; Victòria Reyes-García; Vincent Vadez; Oyunbileg Magvanjav; William R. Leonard; Thomas W. McDade; Sanjay Kumar; Javed Iqbal; David Wilkie; Susan Tanner
Ecological correlates of dietary consumption and nutritional status in highland and coastal Ecuador
(Taylor & Francis, 1993) William R. Leonard; Kathleen M. DeWalt; Jorge E. Uquillas; Billie R. DeWalt
This paper investigates the patterns of variation in food availability and nutritional status among small‐scale farmers from highland and coastal regions of Ecuador. Dietary adequacy is greater among households of the highland sample and appears to be associated with higher consumption of foods from subsistence production. Energy consumption is marginal in the coastal sample where farmers are involved in the production of coffee as a cash crop. Households on the coast rely on inexpensive market foods and obtain less than a quarter of their energy from home‐produced items. Early childhood growth is poor in both regions. In the highland sample, older children have relatively better nutritional status, whereas nutritional status declines in the older cohorts of the coastal sample. Children's nutritional status (weight‐for‐age and weight‐for‐height) is correlated with household dietary adequacy in the highland sample; in the coastal group, per capita income is the strongest correlate of nutritional status. These results highlight important differences in the correlates of dietary consumption and nutritional status among small‐scale producers in two distinct farming systems. Key words: Food consumptionnutritional statusfarming systemscash croppingsubsistence productionEcuador
Ethnobotanical Knowledge and Crop Diversity in Swidden Fields: A Study in a Native Amazonian Society
(Springer Science+Business Media, 2008) Victòria Reyes-García; Vincent Vadez; Neus Martí; Tomás Huanca; William R. Leonard; Susan Tanner
Ethnobotanical Knowledge Shared Widely Among Tsimane' Amerindians, Bolivia
(American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2003) Victòria Reyes-García; Ricardo Godoy; Vincent Vadez; L. Apaza; Elizabeth Byron; Tomás Huanca; William R. Leonard; Eddy Pérez-Then; David Wilkie
To preserve humanity's patrimony and diversity and avoid misappropriation by outsiders, laws should protect indigenous knowledge. Firms producing pharmaceutical, agricultural, and cosmetic goods have used ethnobotanical knowledge of indigenous people to develop commercial goods ([1][1], [2][2]). The commercial use of ethnobotanical knowledge raises concerns about payments owed to indigenous peoples who supply the knowledge ([3][3]). Indigenous peoples and their advocates say that ethnobotanical knowledge is held communally ([4][4]) and that firms should share the benefits from commercial uses of indigenous knowledge. Despite these claims, we do not know how much indigenous peoples share ethnobotanical knowledge. Here we use a cultural consensus model ([5][5]) to show that Tsimane' Amerindians share much ethnobotanical knowledge. The Tsimane' number ∼7000 people and live in ∼100 villages in the Bolivian lowlands ([6][6]). Habitats range from savannas to wet, moist, and gallery forests. Tsimane' show large variation in socioeconomic attributes. Some live in small villages without schools, speak only Tsimane', and forage and practice shifting cultivation. Others speak Spanish, live in large, accessible, permanent villages with schools, and sell crops and labor. Because Tsimane' contain much variation, they are ideal to estimate the amount of shared ethnobotanical knowledge in an indigenous group. We collected socioeconomic and ethnobotanical knowledge data during 18 months (May 1999 to November 2000) in two villages with different habitats and market exposure, Yaranda (which is a 3-day canoe trip from the nearest market town) and San Antonio (which is a 3-hour walk to the nearest town). Panel data served to develop a survey applied to 511 Tsimane' in 59 villages. In villages with ≤12 households, we surveyed all households. In villages with 13+ households, we randomly selected 12 households for interviews. For the interview, we randomly selected one household head. The average distance of the 59 villages to the closest town was 35 km (SD = 24.16, max = 100.5, min = 0.0). To construct the knowledge test, we used published literature and data from free listings of useful plants ( n = 50) used by the Tsimane'. From the list, we randomly selected 21 plants to construct a multiple-choice questionnaire. We asked all subjects whether each plant could be used for medicine, firewood, tools, construction, and/or food. We collected responses in a matrix with plant names on the x axis and their uses on the y axis. We define knowledge as agreement between informants and use cultural consensus and cultural competence to measure this parameter. Cultural competence is the proportion of questions each person answered correctly; we equate correct with the most frequent response in the population or group. Cultural consensus refers to the group average similarity in responses. Data are consensual if the first eigenvalue is at least three times larger than the second, provided no estimate of knowledge is <0. To estimate whether agreement was larger among people in the same village than among all subjects, we first estimated the agreement of each informant with people in the same village and then with the entire sample. When comparing subjects with people in the same village, we found that on a 0 to 1 scale, the average individual cultural competence was 0.83 (SD = 0.10) ([Table 1][7]). The average cultural consensus of the 59 villages was 90.60 (SD = 6.18). All villages but one fitted the consensus model, all informants had positive competence scores, and the ratio between the first and second eigenvalue was >3. Results suggest that people in the same village share more ethnobotanical knowledge than between villages. View this table: Table 1 Summary of cultural competence and consensus in 59 villages and 511 subjects. We pooled people in the sample to compare individual agreement for all Tsimane'. When people were compared with the whole group, the average cultural competence was 0.62 (SD = 0.11), 20% lower than when compared with people in the same village. Cultural consensus of ethnobotanical knowledge among the Tsimane' was 66.3, lower than the average within villages. All informants had positive answers; the ratio between the first and second eigenvalues was 3.38. Results confirm the idea that ethnobotanical knowledge is a consensual domain among Tsimane' of different villages. There is growing international and national agreement about the need for prior consent and benefit sharing with indigenous peoples when outsiders use ethnobotanical knowledge. As indigenous peoples have advocated and as this research shows, the collective nature of traditional knowledge should be considered when outsiders use indigenous knowledge commercially. Laws to protect indigenous knowledge must also acknowledge the communal endowment of indigenous knowledge and the traditional rights and responsibilities over such knowledge. 1. [↵][8]S. A. Laird, Ed., Biodiversity and Traditional Knowledge (Earthscan, London, 2002). 2. [↵][9]K ten Kate, S. A. Laird, Eds., The Commercial Use of Biodiversity (Earthscan, London, 1999). 3. [↵][10]1. D. Posey , Anthropol. Today 6, 4 (1990). [OpenUrl][11][CrossRef][12] 4. [↵][13]Coordinadora de Organizaciones Indigenas de la Cuenca Amazonica, Initiatives for Protection of Rights of Holders of Traditional Knowledge, Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (WIPO, Geneva, 1998). 5. [↵][14]1. A. K. Romney , Curr. Anthropol. 40, 6 (1999). [OpenUrl][15] 6. [↵][16]V. Reyes-Garcia, thesis, University of Florida (2001). 7. We thank M. Alvarado , R. Bernard, Z. Foster, Consejo Tsimane', Y. Gutierrez, D. Ista, A. Nate, J. Pache, P. Pache, M. Roca, B. Sandstrom, S. Tanner, E. Tayo, and A. Yakhedts. This work was supported by the NSF (grants 9731240 and 9904318) and McArthur and Conservation, Food, & Health Foundations. [1]: #ref-1 [2]: #ref-2 [3]: #ref-3 [4]: #ref-4 [5]: #ref-5 [6]: #ref-6 [7]: #T1 [8]: #xref-ref-1-1 View reference 1 in text [9]: #xref-ref-2-1 View reference 2 in text [10]: #xref-ref-3-1 View reference 3 in text [11]: {openurl}?query=rft.jtitle%253DAnthropol.%2BToday%26rft.volume%253D6%26rft.spage%253D4%26rft.atitle%253DANTHROPOL%2BTODAY%26rft_id%253Dinfo%253Adoi%252F10.2307%252F3032916%26rft.genre%253Darticle%26rft_val_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Ajournal%26ctx_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ctx_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Actx [12]: /lookup/external-ref?access_num=10.2307/3032916&link_type=DOI [13]: #xref-ref-4-1 View reference 4 in text [14]: #xref-ref-5-1 View reference 5 in text [15]: {openurl}?query=rft.jtitle%253DCurr.%2BAnthropol.%26rft.volume%253D40%26rft.spage%253D6%26rft.atitle%253DCURR%2BANTHROPOL%26rft.genre%253Darticle%26rft_val_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Ajournal%26ctx_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ver%253DZ39.88-2004%26url_ctx_fmt%253Dinfo%253Aofi%252Ffmt%253Akev%253Amtx%253Actx [16]: #xref-ref-6-1 View reference 6 in text
Human's Cognitive Ability to Assess Facial Cues from Photographs: A Study of Sexual Selection in the Bolivian Amazon
(Public Library of Science, 2010) Eduardo A. Undurraga; Dan T. A. Eisenberg; Oyunbileg Magvanjav; Ruoxue Wang; William R. Leonard; Thomas W. McDade; Victòria Reyes-García; Colleen Nyberg; Susan Tanner; Tomás Huanca
Our results support the existence of a human ability to identify objective traits from facial cues, as suggested by evolutionary theory.
Income inequality and adult nutritional status: Anthropometric evidence from a pre-industrial society in the Bolivian Amazon
(Elsevier BV, 2005) Ricardo Godoy; Elizabeth Byron; Victòria Reyes-García; Vincent Vadez; William R. Leonard; Lilian Apaza; Tomás Huanca; Eddy Pérez-Then; David Wilkie
Individual Wealth Rank, Community Wealth Inequality, and Self-Reported Adult Poor Health: A Test of Hypotheses with Panel Data (2002-2006) from Native Amazonians, Bolivia
(Wiley, 2010) Eduardo A. Undurraga; Colleen Nyberg; Dan T. A. Eisenberg; Oyunbileg Magvanjav; Victòria Reyes-García; Tomás Huanca; William R. Leonard; Thomas W. McDade; Susan Tanner; Vincent Vadez
Growing evidence suggests that economic inequality in a community harms the health of a person. Using panel data from a small-scale, preindustrial rural society, we test whether individual wealth rank and village wealth inequality affects self-reported poor health in a foraging-farming native Amazonian society. A person's wealth rank was negatively but weakly associated with self-reported morbidity. Each step up/year in the village wealth hierarchy reduced total self-reported days ill by 0.4 percent. The Gini coefficient of village wealth inequality bore a positive association with self-reported poor health that was large in size, but not statistically significant. We found small village wealth inequality, and evidence that individual economic rank did not change. The modest effects may have to do with having used subjective rather than objective measures of health, having small village wealth inequality, and with the possibly true modest effect of a person's wealth rank on health in a small-scale, kin-based society. Finally, we also found that an increase in mean individual wealth by village was related to worse self-reported health. As the Tsimane' integrate into the market economy, their possibilities of wealth accumulation rise, which may affect their well-being. Our work contributes to recent efforts in biocultural anthropology to link the study of social inequalities, human biology, and human-environment interactions.