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Vernacular dominance in folk taxonomy: a case study of ethnospecies in medicinal plant trade in Tanzania

BACKGROUND: Medicinal plants are traded as products with vernacular names, but these folk taxonomies do not always correspond one-to-one with scientific plant names. These local species entities can be defined as ethnospecies and can match, under-differentiate or over-differentiate as compared to sc...

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Autores principales: Otieno, Joseph, Abihudi, Siri, Veldman, Sarina, Nahashon, Michael, van Andel, Tinde, de Boer, Hugo J
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4429978/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25971902
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1746-4269-11-10
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author Otieno, Joseph
Abihudi, Siri
Veldman, Sarina
Nahashon, Michael
van Andel, Tinde
de Boer, Hugo J
author_facet Otieno, Joseph
Abihudi, Siri
Veldman, Sarina
Nahashon, Michael
van Andel, Tinde
de Boer, Hugo J
author_sort Otieno, Joseph
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Medicinal plants are traded as products with vernacular names, but these folk taxonomies do not always correspond one-to-one with scientific plant names. These local species entities can be defined as ethnospecies and can match, under-differentiate or over-differentiate as compared to scientific species. Identification of plant species in trade is further complicated by the processed state of the product, substitution and adulteration. In countries like Tanzania, an additional dimension to mapping folk taxonomies on scientific names is added by the multitude of ethnicities and languages of the plant collectors, traders and consumers. This study aims to elucidate the relations between the most common vernacular names and the ethnicity of the individual traders among the medicinal plant markets in Dar es Salaam and Tanga regions in Tanzania, with the aim of understanding the dynamics of vernacular names in plant trade. METHODS: A total of 90 respondents were interviewed in local markets using semi-structured interviews. The ethnicity of each respondent was recorded, as well as the language of each ethnospecies mentioned during the interviews. Voucher collections and reference literature were used to match ethnospecies across languages. RESULTS: At each market, the language of the majority of the vendors dominates the names for medicinal products. The dominant vendors often represent the major ethnic groups of that region. Independent of their ethnicity, vendors offer their products in the dominant language of the specific region without apparently leading to any confusion or species mismatching. CONCLUSIONS: Middlemen, traders and vendors adapt their folk classifications to those of the ethnic groups of the region where they conduct their trade, and to the ethnicity of their main customers. The names in the language of the traders are not forgotten, but relegated in favor of the more salient names of the dominant tribe. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1746-4269-11-10) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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spelling pubmed-44299782015-05-14 Vernacular dominance in folk taxonomy: a case study of ethnospecies in medicinal plant trade in Tanzania Otieno, Joseph Abihudi, Siri Veldman, Sarina Nahashon, Michael van Andel, Tinde de Boer, Hugo J J Ethnobiol Ethnomed Research BACKGROUND: Medicinal plants are traded as products with vernacular names, but these folk taxonomies do not always correspond one-to-one with scientific plant names. These local species entities can be defined as ethnospecies and can match, under-differentiate or over-differentiate as compared to scientific species. Identification of plant species in trade is further complicated by the processed state of the product, substitution and adulteration. In countries like Tanzania, an additional dimension to mapping folk taxonomies on scientific names is added by the multitude of ethnicities and languages of the plant collectors, traders and consumers. This study aims to elucidate the relations between the most common vernacular names and the ethnicity of the individual traders among the medicinal plant markets in Dar es Salaam and Tanga regions in Tanzania, with the aim of understanding the dynamics of vernacular names in plant trade. METHODS: A total of 90 respondents were interviewed in local markets using semi-structured interviews. The ethnicity of each respondent was recorded, as well as the language of each ethnospecies mentioned during the interviews. Voucher collections and reference literature were used to match ethnospecies across languages. RESULTS: At each market, the language of the majority of the vendors dominates the names for medicinal products. The dominant vendors often represent the major ethnic groups of that region. Independent of their ethnicity, vendors offer their products in the dominant language of the specific region without apparently leading to any confusion or species mismatching. CONCLUSIONS: Middlemen, traders and vendors adapt their folk classifications to those of the ethnic groups of the region where they conduct their trade, and to the ethnicity of their main customers. The names in the language of the traders are not forgotten, but relegated in favor of the more salient names of the dominant tribe. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1746-4269-11-10) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2015-02-19 /pmc/articles/PMC4429978/ /pubmed/25971902 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1746-4269-11-10 Text en © Otieno et al.; licensee BioMed Central. 2015 This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research
Otieno, Joseph
Abihudi, Siri
Veldman, Sarina
Nahashon, Michael
van Andel, Tinde
de Boer, Hugo J
Vernacular dominance in folk taxonomy: a case study of ethnospecies in medicinal plant trade in Tanzania
title Vernacular dominance in folk taxonomy: a case study of ethnospecies in medicinal plant trade in Tanzania
title_full Vernacular dominance in folk taxonomy: a case study of ethnospecies in medicinal plant trade in Tanzania
title_fullStr Vernacular dominance in folk taxonomy: a case study of ethnospecies in medicinal plant trade in Tanzania
title_full_unstemmed Vernacular dominance in folk taxonomy: a case study of ethnospecies in medicinal plant trade in Tanzania
title_short Vernacular dominance in folk taxonomy: a case study of ethnospecies in medicinal plant trade in Tanzania
title_sort vernacular dominance in folk taxonomy: a case study of ethnospecies in medicinal plant trade in tanzania
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4429978/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25971902
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1746-4269-11-10
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