Folk taxonomy

Many fruits of the Myrtaceae have a rich history of use both as edibles and as traditional medicines in divergent ethnobotanical practices throughout the tropical and subtropical world. From South America to Southeast Asia, these fruits have been used for a wide variety of ailments, including cough, diabetes, dysentery, inflammation and ringworm. These same fruits are also used to make many food products. Based on information regarding ethnomedical use, known phytochemistry, fruit color, popularity as edibles and availability, the fruits of several edible species from the subtribe Eugeniinae have been selected for phytochemical analysis in an attempt to discover new antioxidants. The fruits of six species in this group have shown a strong antioxidant activity in the 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl chemical assay. The UV absorbance spectrum of the most active compound in Eugenia uniflora L. indicates that it is a flavonoid. Polyphenolic compounds like flavonoids have an enormous range of biological activity and are known to inhibit oxidative damage in vivo better than the classical vitamin antioxidants. In plants, they protect against lipid peroxidation and UV damage that can affect tropical fruits growing under severe conditions including high heat and intense sunlight.

Stingless bees (Apidae: Meliponini) are major pollinators of many wild and cultivated plants, and both indigenous and non-indigenous populations use their products for diverse purposes including food, crafts, and medicine. However, many aspects of both stingless bee nesting ecology and traditional knowledge of these culturally significant bees by diverse human populations remain unknown or poorly documented. We report on the nest architecture, nesting substrate, host plants, and local abundance of stingless bees occurring in Yoloxóchitl, one of several indigenous villages that speak Yoloxóchitl Mixtec, an endangered language on the Pacific Coast of the state of Guerrero. We also document local Indigenous nomenclature, classification, and use of these bees as well as traditional management practices and knowledge of their behavior. Lastly, we offer a preliminary quantitative analysis of the relative cultural importance of each bee species and explore the relationship of traditional ecological knowledge to these species.

The unicorn constituted a pivotal species within medieval bestiaries. An alternative phenomenon was observed in the animal lore of the ancient world: the existence of a multitude of species of unicorn. This contribution sheds light on the role of folk naming and classification in the dissemination of zoonyms and cognitive morphotypes of unicorns among the Greeks and Romans.

Aerial yam (Dioscorea bulbifera L.) is a crop of great economic importance and an excellent candidate for improving food security in developing countries. Nevertheless, there is very limited knowledge on this type of yam diversity in Nigeria. This study assessed the morphological variability existing within of aerial yam (Dioscorea bulbifera) germplasm by analyzing their morphology. The treatments used for the diversity assessment were planted in single row plots in a randomized complete block design (RCBD) with three replicates. Data were collected using agro-morphological traits and the results obtained from frequency distribution for morphological characters showed that the accessions had considerable variation for traits such as stem colour, leaf colour, leaf type, bulbils shape and bulbil skin texture. Evaluation of plants for yam mosaic disease (YMD), yam leaf spot (YLS), yam leaf blight (YLB) and yam anthracnose disease (YAD) revealed that 11.90% were resistant to YMD, 88.10% of the plants may also be highly resistant to YLS while 9% were seen to be susceptible to YAD.

Yams belonging to Dioscoreaceae family are important climate resilient food security crops widely cultivated in India and Africa. In India, one of the major cultivated yam species is greater yam (Dioscorea alata L.). It provides a good source of dietary carbohydrates in tropical and subtropical regions. In the present study, 45 accessions conserved in the National repository of tuber crops germplasm at ICAR-CTCRI were characterized based on 25 qualitative and 13 quantitative traits including the major yield components and four biochemical characteristics. Traits like tuber shape, tuber flesh colour, tuber skin texture, tuber cortex colour, leaf shape and young leaf colour were all found to be of great importance in distinguishing the accessions. These traits were considered for Principal Component Analysis (PCA) with a measure of Sample Adequacy greater than 0.5. The first six principal components of data accounted for 50.12% of the total variance among accessions. The cluster dendr...

Young, 'Classifying Supernatural Beings: Dialect, Folk Taxonomies and Katharine Briggs' Dictionary of Fairies', Transactions of the Yorkshire Dialect Society 23 (2024). This paper examines the classification of supernatural beings in British folklore, focusing on dialect, folk taxonomies, and the influence of Katharine Briggs’ A Dictionary of Fairies. While A Dictionary of Fairies remains an invaluable resource, its structure reflects significant issues in folklore categorization, particularly in its reliance on standard English over regional dialects, its inconsistent use of multiple terms for similar entities, and its treatment of broad folk categories as discrete supernatural "species." The study highlights how supernatural beings were understood within local folk taxonomies, which operated differently from the rigid classifications found in encyclopedic works. The analysis also explores the broader impact of Briggs' work, tracing its role in the emergence of modern supernatural bestiaries and their influence on both academic folklore studies and popular culture. Ultimately, this paper argues for a more nuanced approach to classifying supernatural entities, one that respects regional linguistic variations, acknowledges the fluidity of folk belief systems, and incorporates geographical mapping to identify patterns of supernatural traditions more effectively. The findings suggest that future scholarship should move beyond the bestiary model and adopt a functional, taxonomy-based framework that better represents how supernatural beings were conceived within British and Irish folk traditions.

Objectives: to analyse people's concepts and health seeking behavior relating to diarrhea and dehydration and its implications to improve health services practice. Methods: individual and group interviews were conducted in two municipalities in the North of Nicaragua, with mothers, other community members, traditional healers and basic health personnel. A household interview survey in a random sample of 1.924 families with under-fives was carried out in three departments. Results: people can easily identify diarrhea, as a disease in itself or as a symptom of several folk diseases. The popular construction of the causes of diarrhea is complex, with a mixture of folk concepts and modern medical concepts which influence preventive and health seeking behavior. Health personnel often believe in these popular concepts. Dehydration is a new term and concept introduced by the health education campaigns and often mistaken for the term malnutrition. Oral rehydration solution (ORS) is seen as an ineffective drug against diarrhea. The inadequate use of pharmaceuticals is widespread and in most cases they have been prescribed by doctors. Conclusions: these results show the coexistence of popular and medical concepts, the latter with different interpretations. There is a need for a change in the communication between health services and population, based on an alternative analysis of people's knowledge and behavior.

OBJECTIVES: to analyse people's concepts and health seeking behavior relating to diarrhea and dehydration and its implications to improve health services practice. METHODS: individual and group interviews were conducted in two municipalities in the North of Nicaragua, with mothers, other community members, traditional healers and basic health personnel. A household interview survey in a random sample of 1.924 families with under-fives was carried out in three departments. RESULTS: people can easily identify diarrhea, as a disease in itself or as a symptom of several folk diseases. The popular construction of the causes of diarrhea is complex, with a mixture of folk concepts and modern medical concepts which influence preventive and health seeking behavior. Health personnel often believe in these popular concepts. Dehydration is a new term and concept introduced by the health education campaigns and often mistaken for the term malnutrition. Oral rehydration solution (ORS) is seen...

Opsomming: Hierdie resensieartikel wil vasstel in watter mate WAT deel XII aan die missie van die WAT voldoen, naamlik "om die Afrikaanse taal en die gebruikers daarvan te dien, asook die leksikografie in die algemeen, veral die Suid-Afrikaanse leksikografie". Daar word ondersoek ingestel na die voortekste, agtertekste en die sentrale teks, en aangetoon dat albei buitetekste geïntegreer is met die sentrale teks en in daardie opsig dus wel die leksikografie dien. Wat die sentrale teks betref, word tot die gevolgtrekking gekom dat die gebruikers van die Afrikaanse taal sowel as die Suid-Afrikaanse leksikografie meer daarby sal baat indien dit deegliker gekonseptualiseer en beplan sou word aan die hand van leksikografiese funksies. Die keuse van leksikale items wat die omvattendheid van die Afrikaanse leksikon illustreer en verteenwoordig sal ook aan die hand van 'n goed beplande korpus herbedink moet word. Frekwent gebruikte woorde sal dus nie langer as lemmatekens oor die hoof gesien word nie en die lengte van artikelinskrywings behoort ook meer gelykvormig gebalanseer te word. Sodoende sal die Afrikaanse taal en die gebruikers daarvan beter gedien word. Die Suid-Afrikaanse leksikografie sal daarby baat indien die WAT sou terugkeer na wat van 'n omvattende woordeboek verwag word, naamlik 'n meer gebalanseerde verteenwoordiging van makro-en mikrostruktuur. Dit behoort ook te lei tot 'n meer eweredige verspreiding van artikelomvang en minder onbewerkte lemmatekens.

Many fruits of the Myrtaceae have a rich history of use both as edibles and as traditional medicines in divergent ethnobotanical practices throughout the tropical and subtropical world. From South America to Southeast Asia, these fruits have been used for a wide variety of ailments, including cough, diabetes, dysentery, inflammation and ringworm. These same fruits are also used to make many food products. Based on information regarding ethnomedical use, known phytochemistry, fruit color, popularity as edibles and availability, the fruits of several edible species from the subtribe Eugeniinae have been selected for phytochemical analysis in an attempt to discover new antioxidants. The fruits of six species in this group have shown a strong antioxidant activity in the 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl chemical assay. The UV absorbance spectrum of the most active compound in Eugenia uniflora L. indicates that it is a flavonoid. Polyphenolic compounds like flavonoids have an enormous range of biological activity and are known to inhibit oxidative damage in vivo better than the classical vitamin antioxidants. In plants, they protect against lipid peroxidation and UV damage that can affect tropical fruits growing under severe conditions including high heat and intense sunlight.

La etnotaxonomia muestra como los miembros de una cultura nominan y categorizan los organismos biologicos en su idioma local. En este articulo se presenta la etnotaxonomia de algunos insectos en el idioma mixteco del Municipio de San Miguel el Grande, Oaxaca, Mexico. La muestra fue constituida de 96 hombres y 133 mujeres entre 8 y 91 anos de edad. Los datos se obtuvieron entre la primavera y el verano de 2017 a traves de entrevistas abiertas y semiestructuradas y se analizaron segun las tecnicas de analisis etnosemantico para comprender el significado del nombre de un organismo (categoria nominada) en la cultura mixteca. En lo que concierne a la etnoclasificacion mixteca de organismos reconocidos como insectos en el municipio de San Miguel el Grande, los entrevistados citaron 75 nombres. Se nota que mas de la mitad de las especies folk registradas reciben un nombre binomial (57%) y menos de la mitad (43%) tienen un unico nombre, de estas ultimas, el 44% concuerdan con una especie li...

This study is concerned with a particular text of the Italian Jewish writer Giacoma Limentani. Hers is a brief text in Italian, based on autobiographical reminiscences, but important ethnographically, and, in the context of humour research, for how it documents how the traditional vernacular culture of Roman Jews used to taxonomise families and human behavioural types within that community. That taxonomy was informed by a comic vision and an irreverent way to observe people, resulting in humorous nicknames for human types within the Ghetto (the original social function apparently was to subserve the alchemy of matchmaking). Limentani’s text is also interesting, again in respect of humour studies, because of how incongruity is given comic prominence; after incongruity produces its effect, Limentani partly resolves and makes this into an argument.

Bees called meliponas (family Apidae, tribe Meliponini) are native stingless bees (ANSA) whose products (honey and other elements from the hive) have been employed by various indigenous and peasant cultures since ancient times. This study lists the native honeybee species known to criollos from northwest Córdoba. It also analyzes in particular the relationship between peasants living in three different environments in the region and the uses they assign to Plebeia molesta honey. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 42 key interlocutors. To analyze the obtained information qualitative and quantitative methods were used. Local people recognize 4 native melliferous insects, being the one called "quella" the most important. Its honey is used mainly for medicinal purposes and as food. The predominant use as medicine is ingestion in pure form (45%) and the most frequently treated conditions are those related to the respiratory system (88.53%). In relation to the changes perceived in the availability of this resource, 75% of the interlocutors considered that the frequency of nest encounters has decreased in the last decades. The assigned uses of honey show a high variability in relation to the sociocultural and occupational characteristics of the inhabitants. It is concluded that this honey is a valuable resource for farmers in the region. Given the perceived decrease of these populations, management and conservation strategies should be implemented that, incorporating the peasant point of view, guarantee their accessibility and perpetuity.

While ethnobiology is a discipline that focuses on the local, it has an outstanding, but not yet fully realized potential to address global issues. Part of this unrealized potential is that universalistic approaches often do not fully recognize culturally grounded perspectives and there are multiple challenges with scaling up place-based research. However, scalability is paramount to ensure that the intimate and context-specific diversity of human-environmental relationships and understandings are recognized in global-scale planning and policy development. Here, we identify four pathways to enable the scalability of place-based ethnobiological research from the ground up: local-to-global dialogues, aggregation of published data, multi-sited studies, and geospatial analyses. We also discuss some major challenges and consideration to encourage continuous reflexivity in these endeavours and to ensure that scalability does not contribute to unnecessarily decontextualizing, co-opting, or overwriting the epistemologies of Indigenous Peoples and local communities. As ethnobiology navigates multiple scales of time and space and seeks to increase its breadth, this study shows that the use of deliberately global approaches, when carefully nested within rich field-based and ecological and ethnographically grounded data, can contribute to: (1) upscaling case-specific insights to unveil global patterns and dynamics in the biocultural contexts of Indigenous Peoples and local communities; (2) bringing ethnobiological knowledge into resolutions that can influence global environmental research and policy agendas; and (3) enriching ethnobiology's field-based ethos with a deliberate global analytical focus.

Cette contribution s’intéresse à la langue Edo (ISO-639 bin), une langue nigériane minoritaire de statut et peu étudiée en recherche linguistique. À partir d’une approche descriptive, les auteurs expliquent la préfixation dans la dérivation des noms en Edo. Le Nigéria, étant un pays multilingue où les langues minoritaires sont en danger et souffrent d'une recherche et d'une promotion inadéquates, une étude morphologique de ce type apparait cruciale pour améliorer la documentation et la préservation de cette langue.

Ethnoscience is a paradigm emerged in anthropology in mid-1950s, as a further result of the attempts made by some American anthropologists to redefine the concept of culture that will be in line with the new model they adopt for their study and description of culture that is descriptive phonology. For ethnoscientists culture is not a material or behavioural phenomenon. It is an ideational phenomenon. In Goode-nough's word, "culture is not a material phenomenon; it does not consist of things, people, behavior or emotions. It is rather the organization of these things. It is the forms of things that people have in mind, their models for perceiving, relating and otherwise interpreting them as such.." (1964: 36). Culture is thus a system of knowledge. The culture of a people is their ethnoscience (ethnos = people; scientia = knowledge). Since culture is a very broad category, no anthropologist can do research on a peo-ple's culture as a whole. He can only investigate and describe some parts of it. Thus, Harold Conklin (1954) focussed his research among the Hanunoo in the Phillippines on their knowledge about their environment, or their ethnoecology. Even then, ethnoecology is still a very broad category, for it encompasses flora, fauna and other material inanimate objects. Later ethnoscience researchers pay their attention to smaller parts of the phenomena. Several branches of study then sprouted from ethnoecology, focussing on some elements the environment, such as ethnozoology, ethnobotany, ethnoastronomy, ethnopedology, etc. From ethnozoology, new branches of study-narrower in scope-appeared, such as ethnoornithology, etnoichtyology, ethnoherpetology. These branches show how the attentions of the researchers go deeper and deeper to the tiny details of the environment, of the nature, and how the people view, give meaning and relate themselves to them. These studies show that ethnoscience has helped humans to gain better understandings of and their relations to the nature. It is in this sense that ethnoscience has become a bridge to go "back to nature".

Artocarpus hirsutus Lam. is an endemic tree species of the southern Western Ghats of Peninsular India. It is popularly known as the 'wild jack tree". Several attributes in art, culture and socioeconomic civilization among the folk communities in Kerala state (Malabar coast) distinguish the tree in the history of Indian civilization. Most of the traditional uses and indigenous know-how earlier referred to this species are vanishing. This article discusses various aspects of the popular wild jack tree of the Malabar coast and its vanishing indigenous biocultural diversity among the folk communities of the region.

La información etnoentomológica registrada en el presente estudio se obtuvo mediante la realización de entrevistas abiertas y semi-estructuradas a los habitantes de San Antonio Cuaxomulco (estado de Tlaxcala) sobre los conocimientos y usos tradicionales que tienen de los “insectos”. Se obtuvo un total de 37 nombres locales para designar a 26 etnoespecies diferentes, de las cuales 19 se consideran dentro de la propia clase linneana Insecta, y pertenecientes a siete órdenes diferentes. El resto de taxones (N=7) también fueron agrupados junto a los demás bajo el mismo rótulo de “insectos” o “animalitos”, aunque en realidad no tengan ninguna relación sistemática con los anteriores. Fueron cuatro las categorías de usos registradas: a) entomofagia; b) entomoterapia; c) creencias; y d) actividades lúdicas. Lamentablemente, estas tradiciones de uso se están perdiendo debido a los cambios socioeconómicos que sufren los habitantes de este municipio, así como la falta de interés y curiosidad d...

La etnotaxonomia muestra como los miembros de una cultura nominan y categorizan los organismos biologicos en su idioma local. En este articulo se presenta la etnotaxonomia de algunos insectos en el idioma mixteco del Municipio de San Miguel el Grande, Oaxaca, Mexico. La muestra fue constituida de 96 hombres y 133 mujeres entre 8 y 91 anos de edad. Los datos se obtuvieron entre la primavera y el verano de 2017 a traves de entrevistas abiertas y semiestructuradas y se analizaron segun las tecnicas de analisis etnosemantico para comprender el significado del nombre de un organismo (categoria nominada) en la cultura mixteca. En lo que concierne a la etnoclasificacion mixteca de organismos reconocidos como insectos en el municipio de San Miguel el Grande, los entrevistados citaron 75 nombres. Se nota que mas de la mitad de las especies folk registradas reciben un nombre binomial (57%) y menos de la mitad (43%) tienen un unico nombre, de estas ultimas, el 44% concuerdan con una especie li...

La Etnoentomología estudia las relaciones del ser humano con los insectos, registrando los conocimientos, comportamientos y sentimientos que intermedian las interacciones entre poblaciones humanas y estos organismos. El presente trabajo documenta las formas de uso de "insectos" por los mixtecos del municipio de San Miguel el Grande, Estado de Oaxaca, México. La recolección de datos fue realizada de abril a septiembre de 2017 por medio de entrevistas abiertas y semiestructuradas llevadas a cabo con 229 residentes. Las caminatas en los alrededores de las comunidades investigadas fueron efectuadas para colecta de especímenes culturalmente importantes, involucrando la participación de los habitantes. Con los ejemplares recolectados, se realizaron pruebas proyectivas para complementar los datos etnoentomológicos. Se registraron cinco categorías de uso diferentes para "insectos" en San Miguel el Grande: mágico, estético-decorativo, lúdico, medicinal y alimenticio, utilizando organismos enteros, partes de ellos o los productos que los "insectos" elaboran. El uso de insectos como alimento es significativo en la comunidad, con el registro de 21 especies que a pesar de que no están disponibles durante todo el año, constituyen una fuente singular de proteínas por temporada. La investigación ejecutada en San Miguel el Grande permite mostrar las especies de "insectos" útiles como punto de comparación para otras regiones de México, además de registrar el consumo de insectos por los habitantes locales.

Stingless bees (Apidae: Meliponini) are major pollinators of many wild and cultivated plants, and both indigenous and non-indigenous populations use their products for diverse purposes including food, crafts, and medicine. However, many aspects of both stingless bee nesting ecology and traditional knowledge of these culturally significant bees by diverse human populations remain unknown or poorly documented. We report on the nest architecture, nesting substrate, host plants, and local abundance of stingless bees occurring in Yoloxóchitl, one of several indigenous villages that speak Yoloxóchitl Mixtec, an endangered language on the Pacific Coast of the state of Guerrero. We also document local Indigenous nomenclature, classification, and use of these bees as well as traditional management practices and knowledge of their behavior. Lastly, we offer a preliminary quantitative analysis of the relative cultural importance of each bee species and explore the relationship of traditional ecological knowledge to these species.

The present study aimed to investigate knowledge on the use of catch material for craftwork by the members of the fishing community of Brasília Teimosa. Among the 98 artisanal fishermen interviewed, 64.6% demonstrated knowledge on the use of catch material for craftwork, but reported not participating in the creation of such craftwork. The fishermen cited 36 common names, mainly Actinopterigii (53.8%) and Crustacea (29.2%). The most caught species were the queen triggerfish Balistes vetula (13.1%) and the Atlantic tarpon Megalops atlanticus (12.3%). The most cited material was the entire body or taxidermied parts of the body (48.8%), followed by the skin (20.1%) for the fabrication of jewelry and souvenirs. Some catches had more than one raw material cited, such as sharks and the queen triggerfish. The main market pressure on fishing activity in the community of Brasília Teimosa is for food consumption. Catches destined for the production of craftwork are appreciated as a food source or captured incidentally. However, many of the species cited are on national and international conservation priority lists. Thus, regardless of the end use, the exploitation of these fishing resources should be performed with caution to avoid further harm to these populations and not compromise the sustainability of the activity, considering the cultural particularities of the populations that use these resources for subsistence and/or the generation of income.

Matricaria recutita L. has several uses in medicine, food and cosmetics. Its flower has high contents of flavonoids, mainly apigenine, whose pharmacological action and quality of its water-alcohol extract vary depending on its concentration. To optimize the process of ...

La información etnoentomológica registrada en el presente estudio se obtuvo mediante la realización de entrevistas abiertas y semi-estructuradas a los habitantes de San Antonio Cuaxomulco (estado de Tlaxcala) sobre los conocimientos y usos tradicionales que tienen de los “insectos”. Se obtuvo un total de 37 nombres locales para designar a 26 etnoespecies diferentes, de las cuales 19 se consideran dentro de la propia clase linneana Insecta, y pertenecientes a siete órdenes diferentes. El resto de taxones (N=7) también fueron agrupados junto a los demás bajo el mismo rótulo de “insectos” o “animalitos”, aunque en realidad no tengan ninguna relación sistemática con los anteriores. Fueron cuatro las categorías de usos registradas: a) entomofagia; b) entomoterapia; c) creencias; y d) actividades lúdicas. Lamentablemente, estas tradiciones de uso se están perdiendo debido a los cambios socioeconómicos que sufren los habitantes de este municipio, así como la falta de interés y curiosidad d...

Soñar con insectos tiene una larga historia, así como el entusiasmo para su interpretación. El presente trabajo documentado en la subregión mixteca alta, en el estado de Oaxaca, México, tiene como objetivo presentar la importancia que tienen algunos insectos en los sueños de las personas. Entre 2018 y 2019 se realizó un total de 28 entrevistas abiertas y semiestructuradas a hombres y mujeres de las comunidades de estudio. Insectos de cinco taxones (Pediculidae, Diptera, Erebidae, Vespidae y Apidae) fueron nombrados como indicadores de presagios manifestados a través de los sueños de los habitantes. Los sueños con insectos ocupan un lugar importante en la vida de las personas de San Miguel el Grande, ya que vuelven en símbolos de presagios que han sido trasmitidos por generaciones.

Directions for using the module UNIT 2.0 Core Module 2.1 pre and post tests 2.2 Significance and brief description of the problem 2.3 Learning objectives 2.4 Case study: learning activities 2.5 Definition 2.6 Epidemiology OF Diarrhoeal Disease 2.7 Etiology and pathogenesis 2.8 Clinical features (signs and symptoms) 2.9 Diagnosis 2.10 Case management 2.11 Control and Prevention 2.12 Learning activities (case study) continued UNIT 3.0 Satellite Modules 3.1. Health Officer 3.2 Public Health Nurses 3.3 Medical Laboratory Technician 3.4 sanitarians 3.5 Primary health worker/ Community health worker 3.6 Take home message for care givers UNIT 4.0 Role and Task Analysis UNIT 5.

Directions for using the module UNIT 2.0 Core Module 2.1 pre and post tests 2.2 Significance and brief description of the problem 2.3 Learning objectives 2.4 Case study: learning activities 2.5 Definition 2.6 Epidemiology OF Diarrhoeal Disease 2.7 Etiology and pathogenesis 2.8 Clinical features (signs and symptoms) 2.9 Diagnosis 2.10 Case management 2.11 Control and Prevention 2.12 Learning activities (case study) continued UNIT 3.0 Satellite Modules 3.1. Health Officer 3.2 Public Health Nurses 3.3 Medical Laboratory Technician 3.4 sanitarians 3.5 Primary health worker/ Community health worker 3.6 Take home message for care givers UNIT 4.0 Role and Task Analysis UNIT 5.

The concepts of health and illness, and their causes, are fundamental for understanding medicinal plant choice and use by traditional people. The hot-cold system is widespread in Mesoamerican traditional medicine and guides many therapeutic decisions. Aim of the study: This study explores a hypothesis that climate influences the hot-cold classification of illnesses and medicinal plants, and the perception of hazard of illnesses. In addition, we examine the classification categories within the system used in different regions of Mexico. Materials and methods: Studies from Mexico with quantitative and qualitative data on the hot-cold properties of medicinal plants and ailments were reviewed. The information was organized and then related to the climate type of the study areas. Results: In temperate climates, most diseases were considered cold, and hot medicinal plants were dominant. Conversely, in warm-tropical climates, hot diseases dominated, and the majority of medicinal plants were cold; however, this evidence was weaker. The perception of hazard was congruent with the number of illnesses for temperate climates. There were additional classification categories within the hot-cold system for diseases and medicinal plants, and they were expressed in different terms in Spanish, English, and indigenous languages. Although similar terms and categories were used in the classification of diseases and medicinal plants, they can differ conceptually and vary between places and cultures. Publications are sometimes unclear if the terms used are emic or etic. The basic principle of using plants with the opposite property of the disease does not always apply strictly. Conclusions: Climate appears to influence the hot-cold classification of diseases and medicinal plants in Mexico, and the system is not strictly dual. Improved knowledge of the hot-cold system is necessary to understand Mesoamerican medicinal plant use and culture.

Consistency of naming forest plants was subjected to a field test in a rural community of Northeastern Thailand. Local experts supplied names for a set of trees and vines in a surveyed plot. Results showed a high level of agreement among the informants for more than half of the plants and less than 10% of the plants were not named consistently by the majority of informants. Disagreement on names largely took the form of non-responses or degrees of specificity. In general, vines and immature understory plants produced the greatest diversity of opinion. Of the names collected, 53% were recorded in standard botanical references but about half were linked with more than one Latin binomial, often in different families. Many false links could be quickly resolved if voucher specimens of the plants were compared with herbarium specimens.

Stingless bees (Apidae: Meliponini) are major pollinators of many wild and cultivated plants, and both indigenous and non-indigenous populations use their products for diverse purposes including food, crafts, and medicine. However, many aspects of both stingless bee nesting ecology and traditional knowledge of these culturally significant bees by diverse human populations remain unknown or poorly documented. We report on the nest architecture, nesting substrate, host plants, and local abundance of stingless bees occurring in Yoloxóchitl, one of several indigenous villages that speak Yoloxóchitl Mixtec, an endangered language on the Pacific Coast of the state of Guerrero. We also document local Indigenous nomenclature, classification, and use of these bees as well as traditional management practices and knowledge of their behavior. Lastly, we offer a preliminary quantitative analysis of the relative cultural importance of each bee species and explore the relationship of traditional ecological knowledge to these species.

It is not yet entirely settled what is Lingala and what is not." (Knappert, 979: 58) "Attribuer l'invention de ces langues [lingála et sango] à la seule intervention des colonisateurs relève d'une sorte de myopie historique qui n'est peut-être pas innocente." (Rombi, 994: 335) AbSTRACT This study deals with the language of the Mbenga, a small tribe dwelling in the hinterland of the former State Station of New Antwerpen (Mankanza). The aim is to revisit the quest of the origin of Lingala by taking as a starting point one of the languages of the supposed area of its emergence. This study also provides a good quantity of materials on Mbenga itself, which today may be consedered as an endangered language or almost an extinct language. The conclusion is that the past of Lingala is still a matter of future research. Its vocabulary, phonology and grammar are not linked to a single language, but to several languages located in the upper and lower Ubangi, in Lake Tumba and Lake Inongo area, in the lower Lualaba and Lomame, and in the Wele Plateau. This suggests that Lingala is a very ancient lingua franca as it was already pointed by Meeussen (980: 598). The origin and the development of Lingala appear therefore as a very important phenomenon not only from the point of view of bantu and general linguistics but also as a real bridge for the understanding of precolonial history of the Congo basin as a whole.

The Totonac branch of the Totonacan (also known as Totonac-Tepehua) family is tra- ditionally broken down into four divisions—Misantla, Northern, Sierra, and Lowland. Misantla is an obvious outlier, but the relationship among the remaining three, which comprise the Central Totonac division, is uncertain due to competing lines of evi- dence: lexical isoglosses group Sierra and Lowland against Northern while morpholog- ical changes appear to set Sierra off against the other two. The spatial distribution of the morphological innovations shows these not to be a coherent set of changes inher- ited from a common ancestor, but instead a series of successive innovations diffused in a wave-like pattern. This paper also demonstrates that the morphological inno- vations are more recent than the lexical changes, supporting the prior separation of Sierra-Lowland languages from Northern. The paper also explores the methodological issues associated with the classification of languages in close contact at shallow time depths.

Background-Traditional shing communities are strongholds of ethnobiological knowledge but establishing to what degree they harbor cultural consensus about different aspects of this knowledge has been a challenge in many ethnobiological studies. Methods-We conducted an ethnobiological study in an artisanal shing community in northeast Brazil, where we interviewed 91 community members of different genders and dedicated to distinct activities, in order to obtain free lists and salience indices of the sh they know. To establish whether there is cultural consensus in their traditional knowledge on sh, we engaged a smaller subset of 45 participants in triad tasks where they chose the most different sh out of 30 triads. We used the similarity matrices generated from the task results to detect if there is cultural consensus in the way sh were classi ed by them. We also modelled the effect of gender, age and type of activity on the agreement rate of participants with modal responses in the triad tasks (i.e., that pair of sh in which most participants considered the most similar within each triad). Results-The ndings show how large is the community's knowledge of sh, with 197 ethnospecies registered, of which 33 species were detected as salient or important to the community. In general, men cited more sh than women. We also found that there was no cultural consensus in the ways sh were classi ed, but younger participants tended to use similar criteria for classifying sh. Conclusions-Both free-listing and triad task methods revealed little cultural consensus in the way knowledge is structured and how sh were classi ed by community members. Our results suggest that it is prudent not to make assumptions that a given traditional community has a single cultural consensus model in classifying the organisms in their environment.

The genetic diversity and relationships of 70 accessions of yam belonging to Dioscorea cayenensis/Dioscorea rotundata complex (55), Dioscorea bulbifera (13) and Dioscorea alata (2, as a reference) were assessed using six inter simple sequence repeat (ISSR) primers. DNA was extracted from a bulk of two plants per accession using a modified cetyl trimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB) method. Six ISSR primers amplified 77 fragments with 75 (97.40%) polymorphism at genus level. The genetic diversity, estimated by gene diversity and Shannon's index were 0.36 and 0.53, respectively, revealing a high level of genetic variation at genus level. At species level, 75 bands were amplified for D. cayenensis/D. rotundata complex, out of which 71 were polymorphic accounting for 92.2% polymorphism. Gene diversity and Shannon's index for D. cayenensis/D. rotundata complex were 0.33 and 0.49, respectively. In the case of D. bulbifera, a total of 64 bands were scored, out of which 55 were found to be polymorphic which resulted in 71.4% polymorphism. Gene diversity and Shannon's index for this species were 0.24 and 0.47, respectively. Genetic diversity analysis of D. cayenensis/D. rotundata complex accessions showed that Gedeo was the most diverse among populations and South among groups. Analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) indicated the presence of higher proportion of variation within species (63.9%) than among species (36.1%). AMOVA for D. cayenensis/D. rotundata complex also showed higher within population variation (53.6) than among populations (46.4). In addition, cluster analysis for relationship between D. cayenensis/D. rotundata complex accessions showed grouping of some of the accessions according to their population but it failed to produce clear species boundary between D. cayenensis/D. rotundata complex. The results suggest that there is a high level of genetic diversity in Ethiopia yams to be exploited for future improvement (breeding) of the crop.

Yam (Dioscorea spp L.) is one of root and tuber crops grown in Ethiopia as source of food and income. It is cultivated mainly in south, southwest, and western part of the country. Two hundred ten yam accessions from ten different geographic origins of major growing areas of the country were used in this study. The sprouted tubers of some accessions were received from research centers where others were directly collected from farmers' fields during early March, 2010. The collected yam genotypes were planted in complete randomized block design at two research sites (namely at Hawasa and Wonago) which are found under South Agricultural Research Institute in the end of April 2010. All important cultural practices such as staking, weeding and irrigation were done starting from planting till harvesting. Yam leaf samples with of different origin were observed separately using twenty SSR markers. A similarity matrix derived UPGMA cluster analysis based on geographical sites showed nine distinct clustering groups which indicated presence of relationship between genetic distances to that of geographical distance in most of clustering groups. These cluster grouping is supported by Analysis of Molecular Variance (AMOVA) that indicated presence of significance genetic variation of 210 yam accessions within and among ten collection sites.

Die eerste afdeling van hierdie artikel' beharidel die historiese leksikologie en Ieksikograjie vati Afrikaans met spesI:fieke Lwwysing na die woe& geskiedenis vati die t a d. Die verband met die sen-entiende-eeuse Hollandse dialek word per voorbeeld gei'llustreer. Die irivloed \-a11 taalkotitak op Nederlands in Suid-Afrika lei tot helangrike Ieksikologiese veranderinge. Die leksikograjiese hantering van diP t w e e ontwikkeling en stan~laar[li.~eriti,~ n'ord bespreek. Die tweede afdeling behandel die wisselwerking tusseti leksikografie en standaardisering in die meer onlangse verlede. Aaridag word Regee aan die bydrae van verskillende Afrikaanse wonrdehoeke. Bepaalde Iccwztes van die' woordeboeke in die voortgesette standaardiseringsproses ~' o r d hespreek. Kritiek word gelewer op 'n ongeldige interpretasie van die bexrippe "standaardisering" en "normatiewe inligting ".

Enric Gros i Miquel (1.864-1.949) inició su trabajo como recolector para el Museo de Ciencias Naturales de Barcelona en 1.916, siendo su director el insigne botánico Pius Font i Quer (1.888-1.964). El 19 de julio de 1.919 Gros visitó Yunquera (Málaga). El motivo de su visita era la recolección de plantas. El botánico encargado de clasificar las plantas recolectadas por Gros era Carlos Pau y Español (1.857-1.937). Su trabajo se publicó en 1.922. Titulado Nueva contribución al estudio de la flora de Granada, incluía la carta que Gros escribió a Pau una vez de regreso. Cuando Gros llegó a Yunquera, proveniente de Tolox, su salud era delicada, apenas podía ver.

A loose motion is main problem in diarrhoea, disease that increases mortality & morbidity among children < five years of age. WHO estimated for 1998 about 7.1 million deaths by diarrhoea K. Park How to solve this greatest problem. The various aspects of maternal knowledge have assessed. We should determine the child care practice of mothers during diarrheal episode. A cross section method was carried out from April to June 2015. Rural area was chosen by systematic random sampling method and case by C.H.C & Aganwadi. A self designed and self prepared Questionnaire was used as study tool. It was covered childcare practice by mothers about diarrhea. Most of Mothers had poor Knowledge regarding diarrhea because of illiteracy. 100 women were selected, completed the Q. form after their answer. Only 38% mothers were literate. 42% mothers knew about the result of ORS. 50% mothers gave Khicheri. 64% mothers continued breast feeding during diarrhea. 28% mothers knew about the symptoms of diarrhea and dehydration. Study indicated that knowledge and childcare practice of mothers about diarrhoea. Mothers should be educated for the knowledge of prevention and childcare practice during diarrheal episode.

Background It is clinically important to identify allergens in Artocarpus heterophyllus (jackfruit), Moringa oleifera (moringa), Trianthema portulacastrum (horse purslane) and Syzygium samarangense (rose apple). This study included 7 patients who developed anaphylaxis to jackfruit (1), moringa (2), horse purslane (3) and rose apple (1). We sought to determine allergens in the edible ripening stages of jackfruit (tender, mature, and ripened jackfruit) and seeds, edible parts of moringa (seeds, seedpod, flesh inside seedpod, and leaves), horse purslane leaves and ripened rose apple fruit. The persistence of the allergens after cooking was also investigated. Methods Allergens were identified by clinical history followed by a skin prick test. Protein profiles of plant/fruit crude protein extracts were determined by SDS-PAGE. Molecular weights of the allergens were determined by immunoblotting with patient sera. Results A heat-stable allergen of 114 kDa in A. heterophyllus which is share...

Yam plants (Dioscorea spp), either wild or cultivated, propagate naturally and are highly productive crops even in marginal areas adapted to diverse conditions. This crop plays a vital role in the lives of many people, as a staple food, feedstuff to livestock/poultry and medicine. However, limited study was conducted on the morphological characterization of edible yams in Tablas Island, Romblon. This study was conducted to determine the morphological characteristics of the existing yam in the province. The different accessions from seven species were collected from cultivated and wild species and were assessed using the descriptors for yams proposed by International Plant Genetic Resources Institute and the National Plant Genetic Resources Laboratory to characterize the yam.  Data on morphological diversity were analyzed using descriptive statistics such as percentage and frequency. Eighty-six morphological characters were used in morphological characterization and in assessing the ...

Se presentan los resultados de un estudio etnobotánico centrado en el uso medicinal humano yveterinario en el municipio de Triacastela, Lugo (Galicia, NW España). En total se han recopilado 58 taxones de plantas vasculares y un hongo. La mayoría de las especies inventariadas se emplean exclusivamente en humanos, mientras que sólo el 5% son destinadas exclusivamente a animales. En ambos casos predominan las preparaciones de uso interno sobre las de uso externo. Las dolencias más frecuentemente tratadas están relacionadas con el aparato digestivo, el sistema respiratorio y para el tratamiento de golpes y contusiones. Como aportaciones más significativas en el ámbito geográfico en el que se encuentra el área de estudio, se han identificado 11 nuevos usos en terapéutica humana y tres en medicina veterinaria y se ha catalogado por primera vez el uso medicinal de Allium ursinum L. en la Península Ibérica.

En este trabajo se propone una clasificación taxonómica para el chayote, Sechium edule (Jacq.) Swartz, que incluye dos subespecies: S. edule ssp. edule y S. edule ssp. sylvestre. Adicionalmente, se documentan por primera vez poblaciones silvestres de la especie para los estados de Querétaro y Puebla, México, y se proporcionan datos sobre la distribución de todas las poblaciones similares hasta ahora registradas en el país.