Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
Tibetan Plateau Institute of Biology, Tibet Autonomous Region, Lhasa 850001, People's Republic of China.
Proc Biol Sci. 2022 Apr 27;289(1973):20212650. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2021.2650.
The collection of caterpillar fungus accounts for 50-70% of the household income of thousands of Himalayan communities and has an estimated market value of $5-11 billion across Asia. However, Himalayan collectors are at multiple economic disadvantages compared with collectors on the Tibetan Plateau because their product is not legally recognized. Using a customized hybrid-enrichment probe set and market-grade caterpillar fungus (with samples up to 30 years old) from 94 production zones across Asia, we uncovered clear geography-based signatures of historical dispersal and significant isolation-by-distance among caterpillar fungus hosts. This high-throughput approach can readily distinguish samples from major production zones with definitive geographical resolution, especially for samples from the Himalayan region that form monophyletic clades in our analysis. Based on these results, we propose a two-step procedure to help local communities authenticate their produce and improve this multi-national trade-route without creating opportunities for illegal exports and other forms of economic exploitation. We argue that policymakers and conservation practitioners must encourage the fair trade of caterpillar fungus in addition to sustainable harvesting to support a trans-boundary conservation effort that is much needed for this natural commodity in the Himalayan region.
喜马拉雅地区成千上万的社区将采集蝉花的收入用于家庭收入的 50%-70%，其在整个亚洲的市场价值估计为 50 亿至 110 亿美元。然而，与青藏高原的采集者相比，喜马拉雅地区的采集者在经济上处于多种劣势，因为他们的产品在法律上没有得到认可。我们使用定制的混合富集探针组和市场级的蝉花（样本年龄高达 30 年），从亚洲 94 个生产区中收集了样本，发现了蝉花宿主在历史上存在明显的基于地理的扩散特征和显著的地理距离隔离。这种高通量方法可以轻松区分来自主要生产区的样本，并具有明确的地理分辨率，尤其是对于我们分析中形成单系分支的喜马拉雅地区的样本。基于这些结果，我们提出了一个两步程序，以帮助当地社区验证他们的产品，并改善这种跨国贸易路线，而不会为非法出口和其他形式的经济剥削创造机会。我们认为，政策制定者和保护实践人员除了鼓励可持续的蝉花采集之外，还必须鼓励蝉花的公平贸易，以支持在喜马拉雅地区对这种天然商品进行急需的跨境保护工作。
