ABSTRACT
Ethnobiology has moved through several stages: descriptive, cognitive-analytic, ecological, widely inclusive, and multidisciplinary. Eugene Hunn has divided the history of ethnobiology into four stages. First came a long period of recording names and uses. A second phase began with the application of cognitive, linguistic, and cultural theories to plant and animal knowledge, in the "ethnoscience" movement of the 1950s. A third period came with the expansion of ethnoscience to include ethnoecology, and the subsequent fusion of ethnoscientific and ecological anthropology; a pioneer in this effort was Victor Toledo. A fourth period emerged from all the above, in which Indigenous peoples are writing their own ethnobiological texts or cooperating with academics in coauthored works. Ethnoecology grew naturally from ethnobiology, adding ecology to the list of things studied. One challenge to ethnobiological research is the problem of intellectual property rights. In a world of patenting and corporate control of patents, any Indigenous and local knowledge is subject to predatory appropriation.
