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