Project Director

Shaw, Joey

Department Examiner

Barbosa, Jose; Craddock, J. Hill

Department

Dept. of Biological and Environmental Sciences

Publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Place of Publication

Chattanooga (Tenn.)

Abstract

Pteridophytes are an ancient lineage of plants, composed of ferns and fern allies, which are spread across the globe. There is also a long record of humans using pteridophytes to their benefit, which includes the broad categories of medicine, ornamentation, food, phytoremediation, and agriculture. Understanding these concepts, the goal of this thesis was to conduct a meta-analysis which pulled together data from many resources on the 94 Tennessee pteridophyte species to create a repository of human use information, as well as to examine, analyze, and comment on the trends present within and between taxonomic groups of pteridophytes. The methods used were meta-analytic, which included identifying appropriate databases and search strings, determining relevance of sources, and organizing and analyzing raw data from those sources. The results section taxonomically describes reported human uses to highlight trends across taxa. The broad results are that 29 Tennessee pteridophyte genera had reported human use, while 13 genera did not. Furthermore, the human use categories with most to least reported use are medicinal (593 uses), ornamental (125 uses), food (83 uses), phytoremediation (72 uses), and agricultural (63 uses). Tennessee pteridophyte species have been shown to offer many human benefits, so this thesis brings greater awareness to scientific researchers and the public about the wealth of resources pteridophytes can provide. The appendix to this thesis is organized taxonomically and includes a note about every relevant human use from all the sources examined.

Degree

B. S.; An honors thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Bachelor of Science.

Date

8-2020

Subject

Botany, Economic; Ethnobotany; Meta-analysis; Pteridophyta

Location

Tennessee

Keyword

economic botany; ethnobotany; fern; fern allies; meta-analysis; Tennessee

Discipline

Botany

Document Type

Theses

Extent

124 leaves

DCMI Type

Text

Language

English

Rights

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

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Botany Commons

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