Foodways in transition: food plants, diet and local perceptions of change in a Costa Rican Ngäbe community

Background Indigenous populations are undergoing rapid ethnobiological, nutritional and socioeconomic transitions while being increasingly integrated into modernizing societies. To better understand the dynamics of these transitions, this article aims to characterize the cultural domain of food plants and analyze its relation with current day diets, and the local perceptions of changes given amongst the Ngäbe people of Southern Conte-Burica, Costa Rica, as production of food plants by its residents is hypothesized to be drastically in recession with an decreased local production in the area and new conservation and development paradigms being implemented. Methods Extensive freelisting, interviews and workshops were used to collect the data from 72 participants on their knowledge of food plants, their current dietary practices and their perceptions of change in local foodways, while cultural domain analysis, descriptive statistical analyses and development of fundamental explanatory themes were employed to analyze the data. Results Results show a food plants domain composed of 140 species, of which 85 % grow in the area, with a medium level of cultural consensus, and some age-based variation. Although many plants still grow in the area, in many key species a decrease on local production–even abandonment–was found, with much reduced cultivation areas. Yet, the domain appears to be largely theoretical, with little evidence of use; and the diet today is predominantly dependent on foods bought from the store (more than 50 % of basic ingredients), many of which were not salient or not even recognized as ‘food plants’ in freelists exercises. While changes in the importance of food plants were largely deemed a result of changes in cultural preferences for store bought processed food stuffs and changing values associated with farming and being food self-sufficient, Ngäbe were also aware of how changing household livelihood activities, and the subsequent loss of knowledge and use of food plants, were in fact being driven by changes in social and political policies, despite increases in forest cover and biodiversity. Conclusions Ngäbe foodways are changing in different and somewhat disconnected ways: knowledge of food plants is varied, reflecting most relevant changes in dietary practices such as lower cultivation areas and greater dependence on food from stores by all families. We attribute dietary shifts to socioeconomic and political changes in recent decades, in particular to a reduction of local production of food, new economic structures and agents related to the State and globalization

Taxonomic surrogacy in biodiversity assessments, and the meaning of Linnaean ranks

Copyright © 2006 The Natural History MuseumThe majority of biodiversity assessments use species as the base unit. Recently, a series of studies have suggested replacing numbers of species with higher ranked taxa (genera, families, etc.); a method known as taxonomic surrogacy that has an important potential to save time and resources in assesments of biological diversity. We examine the relationships between taxa and ranks, and suggest that species/higher taxon exchanges are founded on misconceptions about the properties of Linnaean classification. Rank allocations in current classifications constitute a heterogeneous mixture of various historical and contemporary views. Even if all taxa were monophyletic, those referred to the same rank would simply denote separate clades without further equivalence. We conclude that they are no more comparable than any other, non-nested taxa, such as, for example, the genus Rattus and the phylum Arthropoda, and that taxonomic surrogacy lacks justification. These problems are also illustrated with data of polychaetous annelid worms from a broad-scale study of benthic biodiversity and species distributions in the Irish Sea. A recent consensus phylogeny for polychaetes is used to provide three different family-level classifications of polychaetes. We use families as a surrogate for species, and present Shannon–Wiener diversity indices for the different sites and the three different classifications, showing how the diversity measures rely on subjective rank allocations.Y. Bertrand, F. Pleijel and G. W. Rous

Chloroplast DNA from lettuce and Barnadesia (Asteraceae): structure, gene localization, and characterization of a large inversion

We have cloned into plasmids 17 of 18 lettuce chloroplast DNA SacI fragments covering 96% of the genome. The cloned fragments were used to construct cleavage maps for 10 restriction enzymes for the chloroplast genomes of lettuce ( Lactuca sativa ) and Barnadesia caryophylla , two distantly related species in the sunflower family (Asteraceae). Both genomes are approximately 151 kb in size and contain a 25 kb inverted repeat. We also mapped the position and orientation of 37 chloroplast DNA genes. The mapping studies reveal that chloroplast DNAs of lettuce and Barnadesia differ by a 22 kb inversion in the large single copy region. Barnadesia has retained the primitive land plant genome arrangement, while the inversion has occurred in a lettuce lineage. The endpoints of the derived lettuce inversion were located by comparison to the well-characterized spinach and tobacco genomes. Both endpoints are located in intergenic spacers within tRNA gene clusters; one cluster being located downstream from the atpA gene and the other upstream from the psbD gene. The endpoint near the atpA gene is very close to one endpoint of a 20 kb inversion in wheat (Howe et al. 1983; Quigley and Weil 1985). Comparison of the restriction site maps gives an estimated sequence divergence of 3.7% for the lettuce and Barnadesia genomes. This value is relatively low compared to previous estimates for other angiosperm groups, suggesting a high degree of sequence conservation in the Asteraceae.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/46961/1/294_2004_Article_BF00384619.pd

Location, identity, amount and serial entry of chloroplast DNA sequences in crucifer mitochondrial DNAs

Southern blot hybridization techniques were used to examine the chloroplast DNA (cpDNA) sequences present in the mitochondrial DNAs (mtDNAs) of two Brassica species ( B. campestris and B. hirta ), two closely related species belonging to the same tribe as Brassica (Raphanus sativa, Crambe abyssinica) , and two more distantly related species of crucifers (Arabidopsis thaliana, Capsella bursa-pastoris) . The two Brassica species and R. sativa contain roughly equal amounts (12–14 kb) of cpDNA sequences integrated within their 208–242 kb mtDNAs. Furthermore, the 11 identified regions of transferred DNA, which include the 5′ end of the chloroplast psa A gene and the central segment of rpo B, have the same mtDNA locations in these three species. Crambe abyssinica mtDNA has the same complement of cpDNA sequences, plus an additional major region of cpDNA sequence similarity which includes the 16S rRNA gene. Therefore, except for the more recently arrived 16S rRNA gene, all of these cpDNA sequences appear to have entered the mitochondrial genome in the common ancestor of these three genera. The mitochondrial genomes of A. thaliana and Capsella bursa-pastoris contain significantly less cpDNA (5–7 kb) than the four other mtDNAs. However, certain cpDNA sequences, including the central portion of the rbc L gene and the 3′ end of the psa A gene, are shared by all six crucifer mtDNAs and appear to have been transferred in a common ancestor of the crucifer family over 30 million years ago. 1n conclusion, DNA has been transferred sequentially from the chloroplast to the mitochondrion during crucifer evolution and these cpDNA sequences can persist in the mitochondrial genome over long periods of evolutionary time.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/46968/1/294_2004_Article_BF00521276.pd