Conhecimento ecológico local sobre aspectos alimentares e reprodutivos de Tupinambis merianae (Duméril e Bibron, 1839) e Hoplias malabaricus (Bloch, 1794) no semiárido do nordeste brasileiro

Abstract

The local ecological knowledge (LEK) related to natural resources and owned by traditional communities is an important tool to understand the biology of several species in natural environment. Among the species of animals used by traditional communities, Tupinambis merianae and H. malabaricus are very important because of their appreciation and use by human populations for food, in local trade and in folk medicine. Due to their ecological and socio-economic importance, the present study aimed to investigate the relationships between the LEK and the conventional ecological knowledge from ethnoecological and ecological information about diet and reproduction of these species in the semiarid region of northeastern Brazil. Informants who use H. malabaricus were mothly interviewed after the Association of Fishermen meetings and the T. merianae hunters were identified using the technique "snow-ball". The free list technique was used to access animals' food information and their reproductive features were recorded using semi-structured interviews. Stomach contents of animals and their reproductive structures were macroscopically analyzed with a stereomicroscope. A total of 70 hunters and 27 fishermen were interviewed. Informants did not reported different food items for the ontogenetic stages of both species. There were no significant differences between the proportions of food categories mentioned by informants and those observed in analyzing the stomach contents of T. merianae (X ² = 0.907, p = 0.6355). However significant differences between the observed and mentioned food categories were reported for H. malabaricus (X ² = 17,293, p <0.001). Reproduction of T. merianae, according to the informants, occurs from September to February, being November and December the months which presented the highest proportions of citations when compared to the other months (X ² = 36, 857, p = 0.0001). For H. malabaricus there were no significant differences between the frequency of occurrence of the species' reproductive months (G = 14.73, p = 0.1419) and the frequency of mention of these months (X ² = 0.412, p = 0.7255). Based on these results, it was observed that informants have a detailed knowledge about the biological aspects of the animals of this study, providing ecological information that can be used as hypothesis to be tested by western science.