Barcoding and traditional health practitioner perspectives are informative to monitor and conserve frogs and reptiles traded for traditional medicine in urban South Africa
Running title: Herptile traditional medicine in South Africa
Fortunate M. Phaka1, 2, 3 (ORCID iD: 0000-0003-1833-3156)
Edward C. Netherlands 1, 4 (ORCID iD: 0000-0003-1856-0586)
Maarten Van Steenberge2, 5, 6 (ORCID iD: 0000-0002-6964-9014)
Erik Verheyen5, 7 (ORCID iD: 0000-0001-7157-1474)
Gontran Sonet5 (ORCID iD: 0000-0001-7310-9574)
Jean Hugé 2, 8 (ORCID iD: 0000-0002-3695-547X)
Louis H. du Preez1, 3 (ORCID iD: 0000-0002-3332-6053)
Maarten P. M. Vanhove 2, 6 (ORCID iD: 0000-0003-3100-7566)
1 African Amphibian Conservation Research Group, Unit for Environmental Sciences and Management, North-West University, Private Bag X6001 Potchefstroom 2520, Republic of South Africa
2 Hasselt University, Centre for Environmental Sciences, Research Group Zoology: Biodiversity and Toxicology, Diepenbeek, Belgium
3 South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity, Somerset Street, Makhanda, Republic of South Africa
4 Department of Zoology and Entomology, Natural and Agricultural Sciences Faculty, University of the Free State, PO Box 339 Bloemfontein 9300, Republic of South Africa
5 Operational Directorate Taxonomy and Phylogeny, Royal Belgian Institute for Natural Sciences, Vautierstraat 31, Brussels, Belgium.
6 Laboratory of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Genomics, Department of Biology, University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
7 Evolutionary Ecology Research Group, Biology Department, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium
8 Department of Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Science, Open University of the Netherlands, Heerlen, the Netherlands
* Corresponding author: mafetap@gmail.com | +27 714 36 60 65
Abstract: Published literature suggests that Indigenous cultural practices, specifically traditional medicine, are commonplace among urban communities contrary to the general conception that such practices are associated to rural societies. We reviewed literature for records of herptiles sold by traditional health practitioners in urban South Africa, then used visual confirmation surveys, DNA barcoding, and folk taxonomy to identify the herptile species that were on sale. Additionally, interviews with 11 SePedi and IsiZulu speaking traditional health practitioners were used to document details of the collection and pricing of herptile specimens along with the practitioners’ views of current conservation measures aimed at traditional medicine markets. The herptile specimens sold by traditional health practitioners included endangered and non-native species. The absorbance ratios of DNA extracted from the tissue of herptiles used in traditional medicine were found to be unreliable predictors of whether those extractions would be suitable for downstream applications. From an initial set of 111 tissue samples, 81 sequencing reactions were successful and 55 of the obtained sequences had species level matches to COI reference sequences on the NCBI GenBank and/or BOLD databases. Molecular identification revealed that traditional health practitioners sometimes mislabel the species they use. The mixed methodology employed here is useful for conservation planning as it updates knowledge of animal use in Indigenous remedies and can accurately identify species of high conservation priority. Furthermore, the study highlights the possibility of collaborative conservation planning with traditional health practitioners.
Keywords: Bio-cultural diversity, Ethno-herpetology, Indigenous knowledge systems, Mixed-method analyses, Zootherapy