Ethnobiology Letters

Insect Consumption in Indigenous Communities of Central America

2025-03-07T05:30:31-08:00

Insect consumption, known as entomophagy, is an ancient practice that has recently garnered attention as a sustainable food alternative considering the global food crisis. A literature review was conducted on insect consumption among Indigenous communities in Central America, a region renowned for its biological and cultural diversity. The aim was to catalog, for the first time, the insect species consumed by these indigenous peoples. Various search engines, including Google Scholar, Mendeley, Scopus, and Web of Science, were used, focusing on articles in English and Spanish available until June 2024. The findings revealed a total of 15 edible species across five orders with a notable predominance of the order Hymenoptera. Consumption practices involve the harvesting of larvae and adults at different stages of development with larvae being particularly prized. Additionally, the review explores ongoing initiatives in Guatemala, Honduras, and Costa Rica that aim to implement trade in crickets and mealworms as an alternative food source. This study underscores the significance of preserving and valuing Indigenous knowledge regarding entomophagy, particularly in the context of food insecurity.

Using Indigenous Science to Protect Wetlands: The Swinomish Tribe’s Wetland Cultural Assessment

2025-02-14T07:58:51-08:00

While wetland functional assessment or rating systems may include cultural, socioeconomic, or site value components, they are insufficient to evaluate the cultural functions of wetlands to resource-centric communities like Native Nations. The Swinomish Indian Tribal Community has developed a cultural module for use in conjunction with standard physical wetland assessment approaches to incorporate Tribal cultural values and functions in wetland rating. The Swinomish cultural module leverages traditional plant use data from historical and community sources to create a comprehensive plant list and database and identify evaluation categories for assessment. Six categories were used: four use-based categories (construction/household uses, medicinal uses, subsistence uses, and spiritual/ceremonial uses), and two weighting categories (common use, plant rarity). Botanical surveys of fourteen wetlands produced a botanical inventory that was compared to the list of traditionally used plants. Each wetland was given a cultural module score and cultural value rating based on the number of species of traditional use plants observed. Wetlands for which surveys were not available were evaluated for similarity to surveyed wetlands and assigned scores from the most similar. The cultural module score is used in combination with traditional physical functional rating systems to produce a robust, culturally relevant, overall wetland rating. The Swinomish cultural module was designed to be easy to use and update as additional cultural plant data or wetland site data become available or physical functional assessment methods change. The resultant wetland ratings are used in regulating land-use to protect wetland function, both physical and cultural.

Médicine et Magie dans le Sud-Est de Madagascar: Les Devins-Guérisseurs et l’Usage des Plantes. By Philippe Beaujard. 2024. Sépia, Paris. 619 pp.

2025-03-03T19:42:25-08:00

Agave Spirits: The Past, Present, and Future of Mezcals. By Gary Paul Nabhan and David Suro Piñera. 2023. W.W. Norton and Company, New York. 320 pp.

2025-02-14T08:36:20-08:00

Moveable Gardens: Itineraries and Sanctuaries of Memory. 2021. Edited by Virginia D. Nazarea and Terese V. Gagnon. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. 301 pp.

2025-02-14T08:36:18-08:00

Moving Crops and the Scales of History. By Francesca Bray, Barbara Hahn, John Bosco Lourdusamy, and Tiago Saraiva. 2023. Yale University Press, New Haven. 352 pp.

2025-02-19T12:38:02-08:00