Barcoding and traditional health practitioner perspectives are informative to monitor and conserve frogs and reptiles traded for traditional medicine in urban South Africa

Abstract

Previous literature suggests that Indigenous cultural practices, specifically traditional medicine, are commonplace among urban communities contrary to the general conception that such practices are restricted to rural societies. We reviewed previous literature for records of herptiles (frog and reptile species) 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, we interviewed 11 IsiZulu and SePedi speaking traditional health practitioners to document details of the collection and pricing of herptile specimens along with the practitioners' views of current conservation measures for traditional medicine markets. The 34 herptile species recorded in previous literature on traditional medicine markets included endangered and non-native species. Spectrophotometry measurements of the DNA we extracted from the tissue of herptiles used in traditional medicine were an unreliable predictor of whether those extractions would be suitable for further experimental work. From our initial set of 111 tissue samples, 81 sequencing reactions were successful and 55 of those sequences had species-level matches to COI reference sequences on the NCBI GenBank and/or BOLD databases. Molecular identification revealed that traditional health practitioners correctly labelled 77% of the samples that we successfully identified with DNA barcoding in this study. Our mixed methodology approach 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, this study highlights the possibility of collaborative conservation planning with traditional health practitioners.

Keywords: Ethno‐herpetology; Indigenous knowledge systems; bio‐cultural diversity; mixed‐method analyses; zootherapy.

FIGURE 1

Locations of six traditional medicine markets/shops across five provinces visited during this study (visualized using Google Earth https://earth.google.com). Visual surveys and tissue sampling carried out at locations marked red: A = Pretoria Muthi Shop, Gauteng province (−25.73872°, 28.17838°), B = Faraday Muthi Market, Gauteng province (−26.21167°, 28.04538°), C = Pietermaritzburg Muthi Shop, KwaZulu‐Natal province (−29.58974°, 30.39069°), D = Warwick Muthi Market, KwaZulu‐Natal province (−29.85483°, 31.01055°). Only visual surveys were carried out locations marked white: E = Ga‐Mokekolwana, Limpopo province (−23.89158°, 29.44961°), F = Kwa Mai Mai Traditional Market, Gauteng province (−26.20710°, 28.05894°). Muthi is the IsiZulu word for both modern and traditional medicine. ‘Muthi market’ is a term generally used by South Africans (regardless of culture) in reference to traditional medicine.

FIGURE 2

Scatterplots of 260/280 nm (a) and 260/230 nm (b) absorbance ratios of DNA extracted from herptile specimens sold at traditional medicine markets. The log transformed (log10) x‐axes exclude 10 and 31 negative absorbance ratios from plots a and b, respectively, as logs of negative numbers cannot be calculated (in the legend, the ratios were not log transformed). Samples with negative absorbance ratios suggest the DNA extraction protocols require improvements, while extreme values (with square outlines) on the plots suggest the samples could contain protein, phenol or other contaminants. Extreme values are ratios that are higher than the sum of the upper quartile (Q3) of the absorbance ratios added to the product of the interquartile range (IQR) multiplied by 1.5 (Outliers > Q3 + IQR × 1.5).