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Disentangling the relative importance of different biodiversity drivers (i.e., climate, edaphic, historical factors, or human impact) to predict plant species richness at the local scale is one of the most important challenges in ecology. Biodiversity modelling is a key tool for the integration of these drivers and the predictions generated are essential, for example, for climate change forecast and conservation planning. However, the reliability of biodiversity models at the local scale remains poorly understood, especially in tropical species-rich areas, where they are required. We inventoried all woody plants with stems ≥ 2.5 cm in 397 plots across the Andes-Amazon gradient. We generated and mapped 19 uncorrelated biodiversity drivers at 90 m resolution, grouped into four categories: microclimatic, microtopographic, anthropic, and edaphic. In order to evaluate the importance of the different categories, we grouped biodiversity drivers into four different clusters by categories. For each of the four clusters of biodiversity drivers, we modelled the observed species richness using two statistical techniques (random forest and Bayesian inference) and two modelling procedures (including or excluding a spatial component). All the biodiversity models produced were evaluated by cross-validation. Species richness was accurately predicted by random forest (Spearman correlation up to 0.85 and explained variance up to 67%). The results suggest that precipitation and temperature are important driving forces of species richness in the region. Nonetheless, a spatial component should be considered to properly predict biodiversity. This could reflect macroevolutionary underlying forces not considered here, such as colonization time, dispersal capacities, or speciation rates. However, the proposed biodiversity modelling approach can predict accurately species richness at the local scale and detailed resolution (90 m) in tropical areas, something that previous works had found extremely challenging. The innovative methodology presented here could be employed in other areas with conservation needs, We thank the Consejería de Educacion (Comunidad de Madrid, Spain), National Geographic Society (8047-06, 7754-04), National Science Foundation (DEB#0101775, DEB#0743457, DEB#1557094), Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (CGL2016-75414-P), Centro de Estudios de América Latina (Universidad Autonoma de Madrid – Banco Santander), Consejería de Educacion, Cultura y Deportes (Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha, SBPLY/21/180501/000241), Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (PID2019-106341GB-I00) for funding our research. The full dataset can be requested from the Madidi Project (https://madidiproject.weebly.com/)

Trabajo presentado en la 58th Annual Meeting of the Society for Economic Botany (Living in a global world: local knowledge ans sustainability), celebrada en Braganza (Portugal) del 4 al 9 de junio de 2017.-- IECTB authors: L Aceituno, R Acosta, A Alvarez, E Barroso, J Blanco, MA Bonet, L Calvet, E Carrio, R Cavero, U DAmbrosio , L Delgado, J Fajardo, I Fernandez-Ordonez, J Garcia, T Garnatje, JA Gonzalez, R Gonzalez-Tejero, A Gras, E Hernandez-Bermejo, E Laguna, JA Latorre, C. Lopez, MJ Macia, E Marcos, V Martinez, G Menendez, M Molina, R Morales, LM Munoz, C Obon, R Ontillera, M Parada, A Perdomo, I Perez, MP Puchades, V Reyes-Garcia, M Rigat, S Rios, D Rivera, R Rodriguez, O Rodriguez, R Roldan, L San Joaquin, FJ Tardio, JR Vallejo, J Valles, H Velasco and A Verde., More than 17,000 of the plant species of the world have been used as medicines. The Mediterranean basin, and specifically Spain, has a great floristic and ethnobotanical richness, comprising its useful flora around 3,000 plant species. This paper studies medicinal plants traditionally used in Spain in order to analyze the sustainability of their exploitation. Given that sustainability is related to the amount of the resource and its gathering pressure, its availability and cultural importance were analysed based on: the number of papers cited from a selection of over 180 papers, the number of 10x10 km UTM grid cells in which the plants were represented, the number of phytosociological inventories in which the presence of the plant has been registered, and searched on their current conservation status in European, national and regional legislations. The total number of wild or naturalized medicinal species in Spain reaches 1,393, 15% of them being endemic. A positive correlation was found among cultural importance and abundance (ρ=0.48) and among cultural importance and distribution (ρ=0.502), showing that abundant widely distributed species are those more commonly used. Most of the medicinal plants (72%) do not appear on the consulted regulations and do not have any legal protection or known threat and only 11 species are registered in any of the annexes of the European Habitats directive. While this study confirms that people tend to select as medicinal abundant and widely distributed species, many other criteria are used for selecting them.

Trabajo presentado en la 57th Annual Meeting of the Society for Economic Botany (Cultural resilience and resource extraction: preserving plants & people of degraded ecosystems), celebrada en Pine Mountain (USA) del 5 al 9 de junio de 2016., Spain has a very rich and dynamic traditional ecological knowledge system that has suffered severe erosion over the last decades. This knowledge has been deeply influenced by a rich and diverse historical heritage that includes many centuries old documents from ancient cultures, some over 2000 years old. Spanish acute useful flora comprises around 3,000 species, most of them autochthonous. A team of more than 70 scientists from more than 30 universities and other research centres are developing the Spanish Inventory of Traditional Knowledge. The inventory includes a database with information from over180 papers. The review of such papers showed that more than 2,300 plant species are used in human and animal food and medicine: 1,681 in human medicine, 1,295 in animal food, 953 in human food and 709 in veterinary medicine. Nearly 14% of the species (313) are shared in the four categories and a very important amount of species are used both for humans and animals: 35% of the species (800) are employed in animal food and medicine, 31% (710) in human food and medicine, 28% (650) in human and veterinary medicine and 27% (624) in animal and human food. This high percentage of overlap between human and animal uses may indicate that the observation of animal behaviour , specially feeding and selfmedication behaviours, might have given clues to humans on how to use food and medicinal plants[Lo1]. It also reinforces the idea that food and medicine represent a continuum not only for humans, but also for animals.

The edible fruits of Renealmia alpinia are highly valued in the Sierra Norte de Puebla (México) where they are managed at a household level. The plant is wild in the región, although a rare species. The aril of the fruit is the edible part. After harvesting, the aril is extracted fresh and processed for local consumption. Sometimes the fruits are commercialized in tradicional markets. Only 19% of the total weight of the fruits is used for food. Los frutos comestibles de Renealmia alpinia son muy apreciados en la Sierra Norte de Puebla (México), en donde son manejados a nivel familiar. La planta crece silvestre en la región, aunque es una especie poco frecuente. La parte comestible es el arilo de los frutos. Tras la cosecha, se extrae en fresco el arilo y se procesa para su consumo familiar. Ocasionalmente los frutos se comercializan en los mercados tradicionales. Solamente el 19 % del peso total de los frutos se aprovecha para alimentación.

The edible fruits of Renealmia alpinia are highly valued in the Sierra Norte de Puebla (México) where they are managed at a household level. The plant is wild in the región, although a rare species. The aril of the fruit is the edible part. After harvesting, the aril is extracted fresh and processed for local consumption. Sometimes the fruits are commercialized in tradicional markets. Only 19% of the total weight of the fruits is used for food.Los frutos comestibles de Renealmia alpinia son muy apreciados en la Sierra Norte de Puebla (México), en donde son manejados a nivel familiar. La planta crece silvestre en la región, aunque es una especie poco frecuente. La parte comestible es el arilo de los frutos. Tras la cosecha, se extrae en fresco el arilo y se procesa para su consumo familiar. Ocasionalmente los frutos se comercializan en los mercados tradicionales. Solamente el 19 % del peso total de los frutos se aprovecha para alimentación.