Local ecological knowledge (LEK) originates from people’s experience interacting with ecological systems in their daily lives. LEK therefore encompasses a variety of information on ecological systems and organisms. Knowing the local names of organisms is vital when collecting information from residents and associating a local name with other LEK. The taxonomic name of a biological species follows rules that were developed in the context of conventional natural science, whereas a local name is typically determined by historical and cultural context within a local human community. We aimed to clarify the relationships between local and scientific names of fishes in the middle reaches of the Kampar River, Indonesia. We investigated local names using a questionnaire survey in a fishing village. The villagers spoke a dialect of Malay used in the Kampar River Basin, and the interviewers were born in the area and were able to speak the dialect. We linked 28 local names of fishes to their corresponding scientific names, including three species that may be extirpated species in the local ecological community. More than half of the local names were associated with a scientific name at the genus level or higher. Residents of the settlement closer to the river more often responded with the local names of fishes inhabiting river channels, while those in the settlement farther from the river more frequently responded with the names of fishes that inhabit swamps. Finally, we discuss how information derived from LEK may be useful in ecological conservation even when it is not resolved to the species level.
Nakagawa et al. (Thu,) studied this question.