Ethnobiological Perspectives on Hunted Wildlife in Lowland Nicaragua

In this study, Mayangna and Miskito adults in Nicaragua completed a series of exercises to investigate their perspectives on hunted wildlife.  A free-listing exercise elicited 17 wildlife species that were the subject of further investigation.  Unconstrained pile sorts reveal perceived similarities among the species.  Finally, informants were asked to rank the species based on the extent to which they are associated with the use of hunting dogs.  Consensus analysis indicates that there is high agreement on the rankings, and the aggregated rankings closely parallel harvest data from a yearlong study that documented the use of dogs and other hunting accessories (e.g., firearms).  There were noteworthy outliers in the analysis, however, and a possible explanation is that informants are inferring that dogs are useful for some species because they are valuable for hunting other, perceptually similar species.  In addition, the consensus analysis reveals sex-related subgroup agreement in the rankings, but the rankings of neither men nor women seem to more closely correspond to the harvest data.