Zoological classification system of a primitive people

Sympathetic science: analogism in Brazilian ethnobiological repertoires among quilombolas of the Atlantic forest and Amazonian ribeirinhos

BACKGROUND

Drawing on Phillipe Descola's comparative analysis of ontological regimes across cultures, this article identifies analogism guiding ethnobiological repertories among two distinctive traditional tropical forest communities in Brazil.

METHODS

We carried out participant observation, semi-structured interviews and informal dialog with 48 individuals, among quilombolas of the Atlantic Forest in southeastern Brazil and ribeirinhos of the Amazon.

RESULTS

We documented 60 traditional practices governed by analogical principles, comprising hunting, ethnomedical practices, food taboos, and other interactions with non-human entities. We also identify and classify the analogical principles reported in the field data. Based on this classification, we address the phenomenological dimension of the ethnobiological repertoires and discuss the epistemological and ontological foundations of this form of reasoning. We also hypothesize on the role of analogism shaping ethnobiological repertories more generally in Brazil.

CONCLUSION

The heuristic model we apply-articulating phenomenology, epistemology and ontology-could prove valuable in ethnobiology and the emerging field of "anthropology beyond the human."

Conceptual issues in hominin taxonomy: Homo heidelbergensis and an ethnobiological reframing of species

Efforts to name and classify Middle Pleistocene Homo, often referred to as "Homo heidelbergensis" are hampered by confusing patterns of morphology but also by conflicting paleoanthropological ideologies that are embedded in approaches to hominin taxonomy, nomenclature, and the species concept. We deconstruct these issues to show how the field's search for a "real" species relies on strict adherence to pre-Darwinian essentialist naming rules in a post-typological world. We then examine Middle Pleistocene Homo through the framework of ethnobiology, which examines on how Indigenous societies perceive, classify, and name biological organisms. This research reminds us that across human societies, taxonomies function to (1) identify and classify organisms based on consensus pattern recognition and (2) construct a stable nomenclature for effective storage, retrieval and communication of information. Naming Middle Pleistocene Homo as a "real" species cannot be verified with the current data; and separating regional groups into distinct evolutionary lineages creates taxa that are not defined by readily perceptible or universally salient differences. Based on ethnobiological studies of this kind of patterning, referring to these hominins above the level of the species according to their generic category with modifiers (e.g., "European Middle Pleistocene Homo") is consistent with observed human capabilities for cognitive differentiation, is both necessary and sufficient given the current data, and will allow for the most clear communication across ideologies going forward.

Ethnography, ethnobiology and natural history: narratives on hunting and ecology of mammals among quilombolas from Southeast Brazil

BACKGROUND

As a leading practice of Homo sapiens' environmental experience for hundreds of millennia, hunting continues to evoke key research inquiries in the fields of archaeology, human ecology, and conservation biology. Broadly speaking, hunting has been mainly a subject of qualitative-symbolic and quantitative-materialistic schemata of analyze, among anthropologists and biologists, respectively. However, the phenomenological dimension of the hunting experience, in the course of individuals` everyday life, received little academic attention until this century. This study analyzes the daily praxis of hunting among quilombolas (descendants from runaway African slaves) in Southeast Brazil, making use of an ethnographic approach of phenomenological orientation, which dialogue with central ethnobiological issues. The authors also report the local ecological knowledge about mammals hunted in the area, and its relationship to the scientific literature on this subject.

METHODS

Between 2016 and 2019, the authors made use of participant observation and informal interviews among eight key local participants, in three quilombola communities in the Ribeira Valley (São Paulo, Brazil). Fragments of authors' field notes and parts of interviewers' speeches make up the core results obtained.

RESULTS

Articulating local knowledge to scientific literature, this study yielded a hybrid and comprehensive narrative about natural history of the mammals in the area. The authors also accessed elementary aspects of research participants' experience in hunting, such as strategies, tactics, motivations, and feelings. They reveal a set of human behavior dispositions that seems to emerge only in the context of the action, modulating the praxis of hunting on the course of individuals' everyday life.

CONCLUSION

Ethnography, ethnobiology, and natural sciences backgrounds were systematically articulated in this research. This made possible to get a contextualized and multifaceted understanding of hunting praxis in the Ribeira Valley, an important socioenvironmental context of Atlantic Forest in Brazil. The role of an ethnographic approach applied to ethnoecological and biological conservation issues is especially considered here.

Cultural Influences on Categorization Processes

Chiu (1972) reported that in a categorization task, Chinese children were more likely to categorize objects based on shared relationships, whereas American children were more likely to categorize objects based on similarity. This research examines whether such findings generalize to adults and whether cultural differences would also be observed in the activation of semantic concepts. In Experiment 1, Chinese adults were equally likely to categorize based on relationships and similarity, whereas Western adults were more likely to categorize based on similarity. Analogous differences in response latencies were observed in a timed task that reflected semantic processing in Experiment 2, and to some extent in a slightly different task in Experiment 3, although differences between the two experiments suggest that the nature of the categorization task determines the extent to which cultural differences are observed. Overall, results suggest that differences in categorization styles are associated with differences in semantic activation.

Shifting baselines on a tropical forest frontier: extirpations drive declines in local ecological knowledge

The value of local ecological knowledge (LEK) to conservation is increasingly recognised, but LEK is being rapidly lost as indigenous livelihoods change. Biodiversity loss is also a driver of the loss of LEK, but quantitative study is lacking. In our study landscape in SW China, a large proportion of species have been extirpated. Hence, we were interested to understand whether species extirpation might have led to an erosion of LEK and the implications this might have for conservation. So we investigated peoples' ability to name a selection of birds and mammals in their local language from pictures. Age was correlated to frequency of forest visits as a teenager and is likely to be closely correlated to other known drivers of the loss of LEK, such as declining forest dependence. We found men were better at identifying birds overall and that older people were better able to identify birds to the species as compared to group levels (approximately equivalent to genus). The effect of age was also stronger among women. However, after controlling for these factors, species abundance was by far the most important parameter in determining peoples' ability to name birds. People were unable to name any locally extirpated birds at the species level. However, contrary to expectations, people were better able to identify extirpated mammals at the species level than extant ones. However, extirpated mammals tend to be more charismatic species and several respondents indicated they were only familiar with them through TV documentaries. Younger people today cannot experience the sights and sounds of forest animals that their parents grew up with and, consequently, knowledge of these species is passing from cultural memory. We suggest that engaging older members of the community and linking the preservation of LEK to biodiversity conservation may help generate support for conservation.

Local and scientific knowledge for assessing the use of fallows and mature forest by large mammals in SE Brazil: identifying singularities in folkecology

BACKGROUND

Local ecological knowledge (LEK) has been discussed in terms of its similarities to and its potential to complement normative scientific knowledge. In this study, we compared the knowledge of a Brazilian quilombola population regarding the habitat use and life habits of large mammals with in situ recordings of the species. We also tested the hypothesis that quilombola LEK has a special focus on the anthropogenic portion of the landscape.

METHODS

The habitats investigated were anthropogenic secondary forests and mature forests in the southeastern Atlantic coast of Brazil. We conducted the faunal survey using the camera-trap method. The sampling effort consisted of deploying 1,217 cameras/day in the mature forests and 1,189 cameras/day in the secondary forests. Statistical comparisons regarding the habitat use of the species were based on the randomization procedure. We interviewed 36 men who were more than 40 years old in the three communities studied. Informal, semi-structured and structured interviews were used. Two variables were considered in the LEK analyses: level of internal agreement and level of convergence with the scientific data.

RESULTS

The camera trap sampling resulted in a total of 981 records. Animals such as opossums, tayras, armadillos and deer showed a non-selective pattern in the use of habitats. In contrast, the coati was more common in mature forests. We found that nearly 40% of the interviewees' responses converged with the scientific data on the use of habitats. However, the LEK on the species' life habits was highly convergent with the scientific data. The hypothesis that secondary forests would have a greater relevance for local knowledge was validated for four of the five analyzed species.

CONCLUSIONS

We suggest two principal considerations of ecological and ethnoecological interest: (1) In the Atlantic Forest of the Ribeira Valley, the secondary forests resulting from shifting cultivation were as attractive to the species as the mature forests; (2) The LEK has a special focus on the more anthropogenic portion of the landscape studied. Finally, we argue that this environmental focus in LEK is part of what makes it different from scientific knowledge and unique in its approach toward local environments.

Cultural change and loss of ethnoecological knowledge among the Isthmus Zapotecs of Mexico

BACKGROUND

Global changes that affect local societies may cause the loss of ecological knowledge. The process of cultural change in Zapotec communities of the Oaxacan Isthmus intensified during the first years of the 20th century due to industrial and agro-industrial modernization projects and an increase in the level of formal schooling. Based on the case of the Oaxacan Isthmus, this study assesses the relationship between cultural change and the loss of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK).

METHODS

Three hundred male heads of family were interviewed from three municipalities in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca, Mexico selected to span a wide range of cultural change. Each participant was shown herbarium specimens and photographs of a sample of 30 species drawn from a pool of 94 representing local plant diversity. Visual recognition of each species, knowledge of plant form, generic name, specific name, and local uses were scored. The sum of the five scores provided an index of global knowledge which we used as a proxy for TEK. Analysis of variance revealed differences between groups of economic activities. We collected socio-demographic data from the interviewees such as age, level of schooling, and competency in the local language. With these data we ran a principal component analysis and took the first axis as an index of cultural change, and correlated it with the scores obtained each respondent.

RESULTS

We found statistically significant differences between groups of people with different economic activities, as well as a highly significant negative relationship between the Index of cultural change and ecological knowledge at all levels, with regression coefficients between 81.2% and 88.3%, indicating that cultural change is affecting traditional botanical knowledge.

CONCLUSIONS

Our results shown that cultural change, as indicated by occupational activity, level of formal schooling, and competence in the indigenous language, is negatively associated with the loss of Zapotec ethnobotanical knowledge. Heads of family engaged in secondary economic activities and services were less culturally competent, especially regarding the knowledge of generic and specific names as well as plant uses.

Distributional Ecology of New Guinea Birds: Recent ecological and biogeographical theories can be tested on the bird communities of New Guinea

The concepts by which MacArthur and Wilson have transformed the science of ecology in the past decade, and the results of ecological studies such as mine on New Guinea bird communities, have implications for conservation policies. For example, primary tropical rain forest, the most species-rich and ecologically complex habitat on earth, has for millions of years served as the ultimate evolutionary source of the world's dominant plant and animal groups. Throughout the tropics today, the rain forests are being destroyed at a rate such that little will be left in a few decades. When the rain forests have been reduced to isolated tracts separated by open country, the distribution of obligate rain forest species will come to resemble bird distributions on New Guinea land-bridge islands after severing of the land bridges. The smaller the tract, the more rapidly will forest species tend to disappear and be replaced by the widespread second-growth species that least need protection (13). This ominous process is illustrated by Barro Colorado Island, a former hill in Panama that became an island when construction of the Panama Canal flooded surrounding valleys to create Gatun Lake. In the succeeding 60 years several forest bird species have already disappeared from Barro Colorado and been unable to recolonize across the short intervening water gap from the forest on the nearby shore of Gatun Lake. The consequences of the species-area relation (Fig. 1) should be taken into consideration during the planning of tropical rain forest parks (13). In a geographical area that is relatively homogeneous with regard to the fauna, one large park would be preferable to an equivalent area in the form of several smaller parks. Continuous nonforest strips through the park (for example, wide highway swaths) would convert one rain forest "island" into two half-size islands and should be avoided. If other considerations require that an area be divided into several small parks, connecting them by forest corridors might significantly improve their conservation function at little further cost in land withdrawn from development. Modern ecological studies may also be relevant to the understanding of human populations. For instance, during a long period of human evolution there appear to have been not one but two coexistent hominid lines in Africa, the Australopithecus robustus-A. boisei ("Zinjanthropus") line, which became extinct, and the Australopithecus africanus-A. habilis line, which led to Homo sapiens (27). The need to maintain niche differences between these lines must have provided one of the most important selective pressures on the ancestors of modern man in the late Pliocene and early Pleistocene. Thus, any attempt to understand human evolution must confront the problem of what these ecological segregating mechanisms were. To what extent were contemporaneous species of the two lines separated by habitat, by diet, by size difference, or by foraging technique, and were their local spatial distributions broadly overlapping or else sharpened by behavioral interactions as in the case of the Crateroscelis warblers of Fig. 6? To take another example, there are striking parallels between the present distributions of human populations and of bird populations on the islands of Vitiaz and Dampier straits between New Guinea and New Britain. Some of these islands were sterilized by cataclysmic volcanic explosions within the last several centuries. The birds that recolonized these islands have been characterized as coastal and small-island specialists of high reproductive potential, high dispersal powers, and low competitive ability, unlike the geographically closer, competitively superior, slowly dispersing, and breeding birds of mainland New Guinea (10, 11, 13). It remains to be seen whether the people of the Vitiaz-Dampier islands, the Polynesians, and other human populations that colonize insular or unstable habitats also have distinctive population ecologies.

Species-area relation for birds of the Solomon Archipelago

Accurate values of number of breeding bird species have been obtained for 50 islands of the Solomon Archipelago. From information about species altitudinal distributions on each island, the values are apportioned into number of montane species (S(mt)) and of species present at sea-level (S(low)). S(low) increases linearly with the logarithm of island area A over a million-fold range of areas (correlation coefficient 0.99) and with a comparatively low slope, while the log S-log A relation is markedly curved. With increasing isolation of an archipelago, the species-area relation decreases in slope and may shift in form from a power function to an exponential. Comparison of Pacific archipelagoes at different distances from the colonization source of New Guinea shows that the decrease in slope is due to increasing intra-archipelago immigration rates, arising from overrepresentation of the most vagile inter-archipelago immigrants in more distant archipelagoes. When colonists are sorted into sets correlated with their dispersal abilities, the slope of the species-area relation for the most vagile set is close to zero, but for the least vagile set is close to the value predicted by Preston for "isolated universes."

Brain and cognitive evolution: forms of modularity and functions of mind

Genetic and neurobiological research is reviewed as related to controversy over the extent to which neocortical organization and associated cognitive functions are genetically constrained or emerge through patterns of developmental experience. An evolutionary framework that accommodates genetic constraint and experiential modification of brain organization and cognitive function is then proposed. The authors argue that 4 forms of modularity and 3 forms of neural and cognitive plasticity define the relation between genetic constraint and the influence of developmental experience. For humans, the result is the ontogenetic emergence of functional modules in the domains of folk psychology, folk biology, and folk physics. The authors present a taxonomy of these modules and review associated research relating to brain and cognitive plasticity in these domains.

Phylogenetic evidence for colour pattern convergence in toxic pitohuis: Müllerian mimicry in birds?

Bird species in the genus Pitohui are chemically defended by a potent neurotoxic alkaloid in their skin and feathers. The two most toxic pitohui species, the hooded pitohui (Pitohui dichrous) and the variable pitohui (Pitohui kirhocephalus), are sometimes strikingly patterned and, in certain portions of their geographical ranges, both species share a nearly identical colour pattern, whereas in other areas they do not. Müllerian mimicry (the mutual resemblance of two chemically defended prey species) is common in some other animal groups and Pitohui birds have been suggested as one of the most likely cases in birds. Here, we examine pitohui plumage evolution in the context of a well-supported molecular phylogeny and use a maximum likelihood approach to test for convergent evolution in coloration. We show that the 'mimetic' phenotype is ancestral to both species and that the resemblance in most races is better explained by a shared ancestry. One large clade of P. kirhocephalus lost this mimetic phenotype early in their evolution and one race nested deep within this clade appears to have re-evolved this phenotype. These latter findings are consistent with the hypothesis that Müllerian mimicry is driving the evolution for a similar colour pattern between P. dichrous, but only in this one clade of P. kirhocephalus

Species realities and numbers in sexual vertebrates: perspectives from an asexually transmitted genome

A literature review is conducted on the phylogenetic discontinuities in mtDNA sequences of 252 taxonomic species of vertebrates. About 140 of these species (56%) were subdivided clearly into two or more highly distinctive matrilineal phylogroups, the vast majority of which were localized geographically. However, only a small number (two to six) of salient phylogeographic subdivisions (those that stand out against mean within-group divergences) characterized individual species. A previous literature summary showed that vertebrate sister species and other congeners also usually have pronounced phylogenetic distinctions in mtDNA sequence. These observations, taken together, suggest that current taxonomic species often agree reasonably well in number (certainly within an order-of-magnitude) and composition with biotic entities registered in mtDNA genealogies alone. In other words, mtDNA data and traditional taxonomic assignments tend to converge on what therefore may be "real" biotic units in nature. All branches in mtDNA phylogenies are nonanastomose, connected strictly via historical genealogy. Thus, patterns of historical phylogenetic connection may be at least as important as contemporary reproductive relationships per se in accounting for microevolutionary unities and discontinuities in sexually reproducing vertebrates. Findings are discussed in the context of the biological and phylogenetic species concepts.

Impact of intuitive theories on feature recruitment throughout the continuum of expertise

Expertise in object domains involves both the perceptual learning of the differentiating and higher order features that are indicative of concepts and the elaboration of intuitive theories. Triad-similarity judgments, feature-salience ratings, and verbal protocols were used to investigate the effects of theories on the recruitment of features across different categorization contexts, as well as the degree to which expert categorization skills transferred to less familiar domains. Whereas novices considered features that indicated overall similarity to be more perceptually salient than were modified parts that indicated taxonomic relations, experts found them equally salient. Experts' theories were instrumental in directing feature recruitment in contexts involving identification, image generation, and similarity decisions. Experts' theories also supported the transfer of categorization skills to related, less familiar domains. The relation of mutual dependence between perceptual learning and theory development throughout the continuum of expertise is considered.

Folk Taxonomies and Biological Classification

A sample of 200 native plant names from the Tzeltal-speaking municipio of Tenejapa, Chiapas, Mexico, was found to consist of 41 percent that comprised more than one botanical species, 34 percent with a one-to-one correspondence, and 25 percent that referred to only a part of a botanical species. Cultural significance was least for the plants in the first group, greatest for those in the last group. Over half (60 percent) of the names for which there was one-to-one correspondence were plants associated with Hispanic culture, introduced as named entities following the Spanish conquest.