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

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.

Use and knowledge of the razor-billed curassow pauxi tuberosa (spix, 1825) (galliformes, cracidae) by a riverine community of the oriental amazonia, brazil.

In the Amazonian basin, the human populations that traditionally inhabit the forest use its natural resources in various ways. One example is the local fauna which, among several other uses, is an important source of protein. The general aim of our study was to investigate the importance of hunting to the lives of the Amazonian riverine communities and to identify the multiple uses and knowledge about the hunted animals. In this article we focused the study on the razor-billed curassow Pauxi tuberosa, a Cracidae of significant value to the studied community. The investigation was conducted in the "Riozinho do Anfrísio Extractive Reserve", a Brazilian Conservation Unit located at the Altamira municipality, in the state of Pará. We used an ethnoecological approach, which included participant observation and semi-structured interviews. Our results show that the razor-billed curassow is used by the "Riozinho do Anfrísio" local population mainly as food, but it also fulfils secondary functions, with the feathers being used as a domestic tool and as magic-religious symbol, some organs as traditional medicine, and some chicks even being raised as pets. Our study also revealed that the traditional ecological knowledge of the riverines about their environment is considerably large, and that the local biodiversity provides various ecosystem services.