Study of traditional mycological knowledge of Pygmy and Bantu populations of Ogooué-Ivindo (Northeast of Gabon), Central Africa.
1 Institute for Agronomic and Forest Research (IRAF), Libreville, Gabon.
2 Research Institute in Tropical Ecology (IRET), Libreville, Gabon.
Research Article
World Journal of Advanced Research and Reviews, 2020, 07(02), 349-358
Article DOI: 10.30574/wjarr.2020.7.2.0298
Publication history:
Received on 11 August 2020; revised on 29 August 2020; accepted on 30 August 2020
Abstract:
This article presents a comparative table of traditional mycological knowledge of Pygmy and Bantu populations of Ogooué-Ivindo (northeast of Gabon). An ethnomycological investigation was carried out in five villages of this province, to Pygmy (Baka) and Bantu (Kota and Kwélé) populations. The results of this study showed that traditional mycological knowledge of these populations varies according to ethnolinguistic membership, age and practiced activity. Bakoya Pygmies, who identified 93% of total species, got the best fungi knowledge than Kota (60%) and Kwele (33%). However, there was no significant difference between the sex as regards traditional mycological knowledge within the same ethnic group. Concerning age groups, active population representatives (26-60 years) who identified all the inventoried species and young people (10-25 years) who identified 67% of species had better fungi knowledge than senior citizens (> 60 years old) who identified only 40% of inventoried species. About activities practiced by respondents, our results distinguish three homogeneous groups; the first made up of hunters who have the best traditional mycological knowledge (93% of identified species), followed by fishermen and farmers (67-73% of identified species) and the last group is made up of pupils who manage to barely identify inventoried species.
Keywords:
Traditional mycological knowledge; Bantus; Pygmies; Gabon.
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Copyright © 2020 Author(s) retain the copyright of this article. This article is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Liscense 4.0