Age and Gender-Related Variation in Plant and Animal Naming Ability in the Soliga/Solega Community of Southern Karnataka, India

Abstract It is widely acknowledged that traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) is an endangered part of the cultural heritage of many Indigenous communities worldwide. It has also been shown that TEK can vary within a community according to variables such as the age and gender of individuals. We combine the above concepts and use intra-community variation in the ability to name local plants and animals to identify disruptions in the transmission of TEK among the Soliga/Solega community of southern Karnataka State, India. Naming ability was used as a proxy for TEK, and Soliga respondents from three ecological zones (individually, or in small gender- and age-matched groups) were shown colour pictures of 20 locally-occurring plants and birds to name. The results showed that in general, respondents were better at naming plants than birds. While there were no overall age-based differences in responses, men performed better than women in naming both plants and birds. A key finding is that in general, and separately for plants and birds, older women outperformed their younger counterparts. Several ecological and cultural reasons may be responsible for these observed patterns, which primarily indicate a disruption in TEK transmission among women, including local biodiversity loss and other hazards presented by the invasive species Lantana camara , plus socio-economic factors like the impacts of fortress conservation, traditional patterns of marriage, a shift towards mainstream foods and medicine, and differences in the levels of education between young men and women.