An ethnobotany of the Lukomir Highlanders of Bosnia & Herzegovina.

BACKGROUND: This aim of this study is to report upon traditional knowledge and use of wild medicinal plants by the Highlanders of Lukomir, Bjelasnica, Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H). The Highlanders are an indigenous community of approximately 60 transhumant pastoralist families who speak Bosnian (Bosanski) and inhabit a highly biodiverse region of Europe. This paper adds to the growing record of traditional use of wild plants within isolated communities in the Balkans. METHODS: An ethnobotanical study using consensus methodology was conducted in Lukomir in Bjelasnica's mountains and canyons. Field work involved individual semi-structured interviews during which informants described plants, natural product remedies, and preparation methods on field trips, garden tours, while shepherding, or in settings of their choice. Plant use categories were ranked with informant consensus factor and incorporated into a phylogenetic tree. Plants cited were compared to other ethnobotanical surveys of the country. RESULTS: Twenty five people were interviewed, resulting in identification of 58 species (including two subspecies) from 35 families, which were cited in 307 medicinal, 40 food, and seven material use reports. Individual plant uses had an average consensus of five and a maximum consensus of 15 out of 25. There were a number of rare and endangered species used as poisons or medicine that are endemic to Flora Europaea and found in Lukomir. Ten species (including subspecies) cited in our research have not previously been reported in the systematic ethnobotanical surveys of medicinal plant use in B&H: (Elymus repens (L.) Gould, Euphorbia myrsinites L., Jovibarba hirta (L.) Opiz, Lilium bosniacum (Beck) Fritsch, Matricaria matricarioides (Less.) Porter ex Britton, Phyllitis scolopendrium (L.) Newman, Rubus saxatilis L., Silene uniflora Roth ssp. glareosa (Jord.) Chater & Walters, Silene uniflora Roth ssp. prostrata (Gaudin) Chater & Walters, Smyrnium perfoliatum L.). New uses not reported in any of the aforementioned systematic surveys were cited for a total of 28 species. Thirteen percent of medicinal plants cited are endemic: Helleborus odorus Waldst. et Kit., Gentiana lutea L., Lilium bosniacum (Beck) Fritsch, Silene uniflora Roth ssp. glareosa (Jord.) Chater & Walters., Silene uniflora Roth ssp. prostrata (Gaudin) Chater & Walters, Salvia officinalis L., Jovibarba hirta (L.) Opiz, and Satureja montana L. CONCLUSIONS: These results report on the cohesive tradition of medicinal plant use among healers in Lukomir, Bosnia and Herzegovina. This work facilitates the community's development by facilitating local and international conversations about their traditional medicine and sharing insight for conservation in one of Europe's most diverse endemic floristic regions, stewarded by one of Europe's last traditional Highland peoples.

A method to estimate sediment ingestion by fish.

A method is proposed to use naturally occurring radionuclides of the (238)U decay series as mass balance tracers to estimate sediment ingestion by benthic fish. The mass balance tracer method can take two forms: one that does not account for tracers that would be ingested in invertebrate food items (simple mass balance tracer method) and one that does (adjusted mass balance tracer method). The contents of the gastrointestinal (GI) tracts from 17 Shorthead Redhorse Suckers (Moxostoma macrolepidotum) were analyzed using the proposed method to determine the proportion of sediment in the fish gut. The proportion of sediment in the GI tract samples was also determined using a method developed by Beyer et al. (1994), where the percent soil in wildlife is estimated from the acid insoluble residue (AIR) content of their scat and an assumed level of digestibility of their food (AIR method). The mean mass of sediment in the GI tracts of the 17 fish sampled, calculated using the simple mass balance tracer method, was observed to be 1.14g (standard deviation 0.99g) or approximately 46% (standard deviation 16%) of the dry weight of total GI tract contents. A mean of 0.97g (standard deviation 0.85g), or approximately 38% (standard deviation 13%) of the dry weight of total GI tract contents, was observed when the mass of sediment in the GI tract was calculated using the adjusted mass balance tracer method. When using the AIR method, the mean percentage of sediment in the GI tracts was observed to be 30% (standard deviation 16%). The findings in this study support the assertion that direct ingestion of sediment by benthic fish may be an important pathway for contaminants in aquatic food webs.