The legacy of human use in Amazonian palm communities along environmental and accessibility gradients

Aim: Palms are iconic and dominant elements of neotropical forests. In the Amazon region, palms have been used and managed by humans for food, material, medicine and other purposes for millennia. It is, however, debated to what extent the structure of modern palm communities reflects long-term human modification. Here, we investigate the complex interplay of ecological and societal factors that influence the distributions of both human-used and non-used palms in western Amazonia. Location: Amazonia. Time period: Present. Major taxa studied: Palms (Arecaceae). Methods: We used Bayesian hierarchical joint species distribution models to predict the distributions and environmental niche dimensi…