There is a growing debate on whether prehistoric/historic human activities leave legacies on the contemporary landscape. The Sonoran Desert eco-region is a key test case as it has been home to many cultures. Here we ask how did human food use in prehistoric and historic times shape local and regional distributions of plant range sizes in the Sonoran Desert eco-region. We hypothesize that human food plant species found in the Sonoran Desert fill more of their potential distribution range within the Sonoran Desert than non-food species. We compiled an ethnobotanical dataset of food plants in the Sonoran Desert, comparing these food plants to their non-food sister taxa and congeners. We compared the distribution ranges between food and non-food plants found in the Sonoran Desert. We used primarily three databases, the Botanical Information and Ecology Network (BIEN) database, the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), and the SEINet data portal for the Southwest.
Results/Conclusions
Sonoran Desert food plants have higher range filling throughout North America and the Sonoran Desert eco-region than non-food plants, especially for certain heavily-used genera. Our results suggest that Sonoran Desert food plants are more widely distributed on the North American and Sonoran Desert landscape than their non-food sister taxa and congeners. Thus, human dispersal may have also had a lasting effect on the biogeography of plants in the Sonoran Desert.