Highly cultural significant edible and toxic mushrooms among the Tseltal from the Highlands of Chiapas, Mexico

Abstract

The concept of cultural significance and its quantitative evaluation are useful to recognize which mushroom species (both edible and toxic) are the most relevant within a specific community. This work lists the most culturally significant edible and toxic species for the Tseltal groups in the Highlands of Chiapas. It also evaluates whether the composition and significance of these are dissimilar between the different Tseltal communities, proving the hypothesis that the edible and toxic species are not the same nor do they have the same level of significance in different settlements. One hundred and ninetythree interviews were carried out with Tseltal participants regarding edible and toxic mushrooms. The information was analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively, using multivariate methods. People recognized 25 edible taxa whose names differ across the seven communities. The most frequently mentioned and consumed taxa are Amanita complex. caesarea, Cantharellus complex. cibarius and Agaricus spp. The classification analysis based on the relative frequency of mention for edible species shows a variation pattern explained by the geographic, cultural and linguistic variation between Tseltal groups. For toxic mushrooms, people recognized and assigned names to 17 taxa. Only 17% of the interviewees assign at least one name to these species. The results show that Tseltal peoples from the Highlands of Chiapas are highly mycophilic. Furthermore, clear differences within the seven Tseltal groups are clear, not only with regards to lexical variations, but also regarding the number of known species, the species that are known and their degree of significance.

Breaking the paradigms of residual categories and neglectable importance of non-used resources; the "vital" traditional knowledge of non-edible mushrooms and their substantive cultural significance

“…This concurs with studies on the Karbi people of Northeastern India, that found that some species lose their taste when ripened, and are therefore collected and consumed only at their juvenile stage [17]. This phenomenon has also been recorded in Southern Mexico, where the Tseltales report some edible species as toxic [13]. Similarly, the consumption of species known as toxic, such as Tricholoma equestre, has been documented [76].…”

“…Our data showed that non-edible fungi species are key factors in the kosmos, corpus, and praxis of traditional knowledge of wild mushrooms [5]. We identi ed more than 100 non-edible taxa; in contrast, other ethnomycological studies usually mention up to 17 species that are recognized as toxic or poisonous [13,41]. Moreover, the characterization of local knowledge on non-edible mushrooms has been super cial and is generally the result generalizations from edible mushrooms [11,16,19,75].…”

“…The names emerge by contrasting non-edible with edible mushrooms, and each ethnotaxon is delimited by certain types of characteristics that allow for its recognition. In this nomenclatural scheme we observed that only the most remarkable species, or the ones that represent health hazards, have a name, but as their relevance declines, so does the interest to assign them names [9,11,13,30,41]. In addition, the names demonstrate the pragmatic character of the nomenclature, where a vast knowledge of morphologic, ecologic, phenologic and qualitative traits is employed to allow the recognition of every ethnotaxon [8].…”

“…Studies conducted in different parts of the world report that non-edible mushrooms are identi ed in general terms, without speci c names, and only classi ed as non-edible [13][14][15]20,41]. Scarce studies report one or two local names to refer to non-edible ethnotaxa [2,11,26,30,32].…”

“…The "double edible" approach has been reported in diverse ethnomycological studies, which stipulate that names of non-edible mushrooms contain terms that indicate the opposition to an edible variety, e.g. : the bad […], partner, older brother, friend [13,30]. Haro-Luna [19] documented the dual worldview of the Wixarika people regarding edible vs toxic mushrooms: the rst pertain to tangible reality, while the second pertain to the spiritual realm and must not be eaten.…”