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      Medicinal use of fauna by a traditional community in the Brazilian Amazonia

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          Abstract

          Background

          Zootherapy inventories are important as they contribute to the world documentation of the prevalence, importance and diversity of the medicinal use of animals in traditional human communities. The present study aims to contribute with a more valuable example of the zootherapy practices of a traditional community in the Brazilian Amazonia – the “Riozinho do Anfrísio” Extractive Reserve, in Northern Brazil.

          Methods

          We used the methods of participant observation and semi-structured interviews, applied to 25 informants. We employed the combined properties of two indices to measure the medicinal importance of each cited species to the studied community, as well as their versatility in the treatment of diseases: the well known Use Value (UV) and the Medicinal Applications Value (MAV) that we developed.

          Results

          We recorded 31 species of medicinal animals from six taxonomic categories, seven of which are new to science. The species are used for the treatment of 28 diseases and one species is used as an amulet against snakebites. The five species with the highest UV indices are the most popular and valued by the studied community. Their contrasting MAV indices indicate that they have different therapeutic properties: specific (used for the treatment of few diseases; low versatility) and all-purpose (several diseases; high versatility). Similarly, the most cited diseases were also those that could be treated with a larger number of animal species. Ten species are listed in the CITES appendices and 21 are present in the IUCN Red List. The knowledge about the medicinal use of the local fauna is distributed evenly among the different age groups of the informants.

          Conclusions

          This study shows that the local fauna represents an important medicinal resource for the inhabitants of the protected area. The combined use of the UV and MAV indices allowed identifying the species with the highest therapeutic potential. This type of information about a species may be of interest to pharmacological research, and is crucial to its conservation, since it helps signaling the species that may undergo higher hunting pressures. Data on zootherapy can also be of interesting to ecologists by contributing to indicators of local biodiversity richness.

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          Most cited references27

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          The useful plants of Tambopata, Peru: II. Additional hypothesis testing in quantitative ethnobotany

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            Introduced plants in the indigenous Pharmacopoeia of Northern South America

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              Knowledge and Use Value of Plant Species in a Rarámuri Community: A Gender Perspective for Conservation

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                Author and article information

                Journal
                J Ethnobiol Ethnomed
                J Ethnobiol Ethnomed
                Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine
                BioMed Central
                1746-4269
                2012
                27 September 2012
                : 8
                : 37
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Universidade Federal do Pará, Núcleo de Ciências Agrárias e Desenvolvimento Rural (NCADR), Programas de Pós-Graduação em Agriculturas Amazônicas (NCADR) e Antropologia (IFCH), Cidade Universitária José da Silveira Netto, Rua Augusto Corrêa, N° 1, Guamá, Belém, 66075-110, Pará, Brazil
                [2 ]Centro de Biologia Ambiental (CBA), Departamento de Biologia Animal, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa,, Universidade de Lisboa, Edifício C2, Campo Grande, Lisboa, 1749-016, Portugal
                [3 ]Centre for Environmental and Marine Studies (CESAM), Departamento de Biologia Animal, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, C2-P3 Campo Grande, Lisboa, 1794-016, Portugal
                Article
                1746-4269-8-37
                10.1186/1746-4269-8-37
                3502351
                23013927
                cecf8e06-86fc-4491-8932-498949509fbf
                Copyright ©2012 Barros et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

                This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

                History
                : 14 July 2012
                : 24 September 2012
                Categories
                Research

                Health & Social care
                medicinal applications value (mav) index,ethnozoology,zootherapy,species conservation,brazilian amazonia,use value (uv) index,ethnomedicine

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