Salako, Kolawole ValèreMoreira, FranciscoGbedomon, Rodrigue CastroTovissodé, FrédéricAssogbadjo, Achille EphremKakai, Romain Lucas Glèlè2018-06-052018-06-052018Salako et al. Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine (2018) 14:36http://hdl.handle.net/10400.5/15557ResearchBackground: Eliciting factors affecting distribution of traditional knowledge (TK) and cultural importance of plant resources is central in ethnobiology. Socio-demographic attributes and ecological apparency hypothesis (EAH) have been widely documented as drivers of TK distribution, but their synergistic effect is poorly documented. Here, we focused on Borassus aethiopum, a socio-economic important agroforestry palm in Africa, analyzing relationships between the number of use-reports and cultural importance on one hand, and informant socio-demographic attributes (age category and gender) on the other hand, considering the EAH at multi-scale contexts. Our hypothesis is that effects of socio-demographic attributes on use-reports and cultural importance are shaped by both local (village level) and regional (chorological region level) apparency of study species. We expected so because distribution of knowledge on a resource in a community correlates to the versatility in the resource utilization but also connections among communities within a region. Methods: Nine hundred ninety-two face-to-face individual semi-structured interviews were conducted in six villages of low versus high local abundance of B. aethiopum spanning three chorological regions (humid, sub-humid and semiarid) also underlying a gradient of increasing distribution and abundance of B. aethiopum. Number of use-reports and score of importance of uses of B. aethiopum were recorded in six use-categories including medicine, food, handcraft, construction, firewood, and ceremonies and rituals. Data were analyzed using Poisson and ordered logistic modelsengBorassus aethiopum Mart.Beninethnobotanyknowledge distributionwild palmconservationjournal article10.1186/s13002-018-0233-8