Nat Bletter
Main research interests
- theoretical, quantitative, and cross-cultural ethnobotany
- plants of migration and introduced plants
- fruit and other food plants
- medicinal plants, especially for malaria and other parasitic diseases
- cacao and chocolate
- taste-altering plants such as miracle fruit
- bioinformatics
- geographic information systems (GIS)
Previous papers
- Bletter, N., 2008, "The Biodiversity of Your Refrigerator- An Exercise in Food Origins." Ethnobotany Research and Applications.
- Bletter, N., 2008, "A quantitative synthesis of the medicinal ethnobotany of the Malinké of Mali and the Asháninka of Peru, with a new theoretical framework." Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine.
- Bletter, N., Reynertson, K., and Velasquez Runk, J., 2007, “Artificae Plantae: The taxonomy, ecology, and ethnobotany of the Simulacraceae” , invited paper to Ethnobotany Research and Applications, 5: 159-177.
- Bletter, N. and D. Daly. 2006. "Cacao and its relatives in South America: An overview of taxonomy, ecology, biogeography, chemistry, and ethnobotany" in Cameron L. McNeil ed. Chocolate in Mesoamerica: A Cultural History of Cacao , University Press of Florida.
- Bletter, N. 2006. "Talking Books: A New Method of Returning Ethnobiological Research Documentation to the Non-literate." Economic Botany, 60(1):85-90.
- Bletter, N., Janovec, J, Brosi B, and Daly, D. C. 2004. “A digital base map for studying the Neotropical flora”, Taxon, 53(2): 469-477.
Articles in progress
- "Herbarium Confidentiality: the Case of the Voucher Specimen"
- Quick calculation of species accumulation curves in the field
- Publication of thesis results
- Compound synergy in medicinal plants
- Cacao antioxidants from different regions of the world
Links
- Talking Books for Returning Documentation to Communities
- Ethnobotany of the Mekong
- Kauai field course
- A Digital Basemap of the Americas
- Urban Ethnobotany and Thesis Outline
- Edible Plant Tour and Scientific American podcast
- Ethnobotanical, Culinary, and Musical Tour of Bali in 2008
- Simulacraceae in Scientific American
- Taste-altering plants and tastings and an interesting story about them
- Botany in Action Program of Phipps Conservatory
