Gothenburg Global Biodiversity Centre, Göteborg, Sweden.
Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Göteborg, Sweden.
J Ethnobiol Ethnomed. 2021 Dec 11;17(1):69. doi: 10.1186/s13002-021-00493-6.
Species with direct uses, such as sources of food, shelter, building material and medicine tend to have more specific local names. But could the same apply for species that people fear?
To address this question, here we explore the behavior and perception of species diversity and dangerousness through a survey of 1037 households in nine villages in Cabo Delgado, northern Mozambique. We compare people's knowledge of snakes with that of lizards and amphibians.
We find that northern Mozambicans know four to five times more local names for snakes than for lizards and frogs, despite the local species richness of snakes being comparable to the diversity of lizards and frogs. We further find that local knowledge was on par with the academic literature regarding snakebite symptoms.
Our results suggest that fear can increase the level of specificity in naming species among indigenous communities, which could lead to biases in the mapping and protection of species that include data from citizen reports.
具有直接用途的物种，如食物、住所、建筑材料和药物的来源，往往具有更特定的当地名称。但是，人们害怕的物种是否也适用呢？
为了解决这个问题，我们通过对莫桑比克北部德尔加多角省 9 个村庄的 1037 户家庭进行调查，探讨了物种多样性和危险程度的行为和认知。我们比较了人们对蛇类、蜥蜴类和两栖类动物的了解程度。
我们发现，尽管北部莫桑比克人的蛇类物种丰富度与蜥蜴和青蛙相当，但他们对蛇类的当地名称的了解程度是蜥蜴和青蛙的四到五倍。我们进一步发现，当地知识与学术文献中关于蛇咬伤症状的知识相当。
我们的结果表明，恐惧可以增加土著社区中对物种命名的特异性水平，这可能导致包括公民报告数据在内的物种绘图和保护存在偏差。
