Ethnoecology, Resource Use, Conservation And Development In A ...

to morphological differences between the two. When I asked why the male and
female forms of Pithecia pithecia, the highly sexually dimorphic Guiana saki, were both
given the same name (oroa), people would explain it on the grounds that they were
the male and female of the same monkey. Terminal categories were, as far as I could
tell, consistently employed by members of all sectors of the population irrespective
of differences in the circumstances of use.
There are some important exceptions to the correspondence with scientific
species. Both species of Geocheleone, for example, are referred to in the first
instance by the name wurada. When, as happens rarely, there is a need to
distinguish the two, they are referred to by specific names, binomial derivations of
this term based upon different habitat use. The term is polysemous, wuradanao
(the suffix 'nao' pluralises nouns) being a collective term corresponding in meaning
to the composition of the biological order Testudinata. The referential domain of the
term kapash, for armadillo, has a similar structure. In its restricted sense, it refers to
the two Dasypus species, specific names for which, like those of wurada, are
binomial derivations from this name, although in this case based upon morphological
differences. It also has extended senses in which it incorporates Cabassous
unicinctus, and sometimes Priodontes maximus as well.
Smaller, less familiar groups may be highly lumped with respect to the scientific
classification: the murids and didelphids, for example, are lumped to sub-family level.
Within these groups phenotypically distinct forms can be readily recognised,
indicating that these aggregations are purely linguistic, not perceptual. Most
invertebrate taxa are also highly lumped, commonly to the level of the order. Most of
these polytypic terminal categories appear to correspond closely to phylogenetic
groupings. Those invertebrate groups that are divided into terminologically distinct
forms almost all have nutritional value or some other special significance to people,
such as those that are dangerous or have some symbolic significance (for examples
of the former see chapter 4.5.1). These include many hymenopterans, larval
lepidopterans, some chelicerates and a few dipterans.
A few animal species are split with respect to the biological classification. Within
the category suburu (Alouatta seniculus), for example, a smaller kind called sooman
sik is distinguished. Among powatu (in its restricted sense, see below), a large type
is referred to as wainsari. These two examples appear to refer to intraspecies
morphological differences based on gender - both of these species exhibit a marked
size dimorphism among males and females. There are other examples, where
categories corresponding to biological species are split and named binomially, which