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

same subject was sought in the ecological literature. When the latter was available, I
noted whether the corresponding information in the two data sets was consistent.
7.2 Collared peccaries
Specific food plants recorded more than once for bakuru included the reproductive
parts (fruits, seeds or both) of those species listed in table 7.1. In this and
subsequent such tables, the two right-hand columns show whether each of these was
corroborated in the ecological literature, by the reported consumption of fruits of
either the same genus ('Gen'), or the same family ('Fam'). Other foods included in the
ethnoecological data set on bakuru but not listed in the table were the shoots of
wild banana, yapun: an insect larva found in old seeds of Attalea regia, and the
cultivated tubers cassava (Manihot esculenta), sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas),
yam (Dioscorea cayennensis) and eddo (Colocasia esculenta).
Most of the published ecological data on collared peccaries (Tayassu tajacu)
comes from very different habitats to that in which the present study is located. The
exception is that of Henry (1997), who reported the contents of stomachs collected
in French Guiana to include a high proportion of seeds, a lesser proportion of fruit
pulp and a similar proportion of animal matter. More specific identifications of food
items were not made. Kiltie (1981a) found seeds of several species of palm, including
Jessenia (which has since been re-assigned to Oenocarpus), in collared peccary
stomachs collected in Peru. Small quantities of animal material were regularly found,
and reported to consist mostly of insect parts, though the study period did not
include the time of greatest food scarcity. Bodmer (1989) also found seeds of
Oenocarpus (Jessenia) in collared peccary stomachs from Peru, along with those of
Virola, Inga and unidentified members of the families Anacardiaceae, Apocynaceae
(very low frequency), Leguminosae and, at a very high frequency, Sapotaceae. In a
later study from the same location, earthworms were among several animal foods
identified, but were recorded in smaller quantities than insects, molluscs and
mammals (Bodmer et al. 1997b: 15-27). Food plants reported from a dry forest in
the Venezuelan Llanos showed no overlap with those recorded here in terms of
species and genera, but included members of the families Anacardiaceae,
Leguminosae and Palmae. The parts of plants eaten were, again, mostly fruits and
seeds (Barreto et al. 1997). None of the ecological studies consulted appears to have
taken place in an agricultural area, but there exist anecdotal reports of consumption
of a variety of cultivated plants (Sowls 1984: 196). Roots and tubers of non-
cultivated plants are reported to be important in the diets of peccaries in the Brazilian