Emerging Synergies Between Bioinformatics and Ethnobotany

• lack of a unified approach has also led to a paucity of comparative ethnobotanical studies, studies that not only examine different uses of the same types of plants in different cultures, but also compare the manner in which these plants figure in different worldviews.

• Ethnobotanical research incorporates much interdisciplinary knowledge, highly specialized, and extensive training is required for individuals to achieve a level of proficiency in any one area

- botany, systematics, ecology, plant geography, pharmacology, linguistics, and anthropology.

• no standard system of archiving data exists. A standardization of terms and a unified system to describe and record medicinal plant uses would be of enormous benefit to researchers, especially where exchanges of data sets are involved.

• data is often inaccessible, becoming increasingly distributed in various types of databases, and websites.