How species body size is important for traditional food systems based on wild fish and animals
Many communities continue to depend on the harvest of wild fish and animals for critical sources of nutritious food, healthy activity, and cultural connection to the land.
But food systems based on these species are coming under increasing stress due to rapid social and environmental change. As a result, identifying factors that promote the security of traditional food systems is a growing priority.
Read the open access paper on the FACETS website.
The widespread importance of species body size has been recognized in different academic disciplines for decades. For example, ecologists have demonstrated how species body size influences population densities, growth rates, and survival, while anthropologists have studied how body size affects species selection and harvest output of human hunters.
Put more bluntly, there are more mice in the world than moose, but moose are hunted more than mice.
Associations between species body size and important social and ecological characteristics are often well-documented, and it was our goal to synthesize these to demonstrate how body size, or more precisely how a diversity of body sizes, can contribute to the security of traditional food systems.
We compiled data and literature from biology, anthropology, geography, and food security science to demonstrate how characteristics associated with the average size of a vertebrate animal influence its availability (are they rare or numerous?), accessibility (near or far?), adequacy (nutritious and safe to eat?) and, ultimately, use.
We found larger species, and especially larger mammals, were more frequently used in data originating from northern North America. In studies from around the world, larger species represented more biomass (i.e., kilograms per kilometre squared) on the landscape; this biomass was more calorie-rich since it contained more fat, and these calories required less time to harvest and process.
In other words, larger species maximized average caloric returns for time spent harvesting. In contrast, smaller species were more diverse (i.e., more species), numerous (i.e., more individuals per species), and reproduced more rapidly (i.e., more young per year), meaning they can sustain higher rates of harvest and rebound from population declines more rapidly.
Smaller species were often simpler to harvest and generally contained fewer contaminants, but they could cost more to harvest per kilogram and may contribute less to food sharing.
In short, larger and smaller species both have their advantages for traditional food systems: larger species tended to be more rewarding to harvest while smaller species tended to be more resilient.
Species body size is, of course, one of many factors influencing the security of traditional food systems, and species are valued for many reasons beyond their use as food.
Also, the data and theory synthesized in this paper come from academic sources that were often written without the participation of Indigenous Knowledge holders.
Our goal here was, while being conscious of the non-Indigenous origins of much of this data and theory, to bring it together to highlight the many body size related trends that could affect traditional food systems, potentially giving background to policy makers looking to promote the security of traditional food systems facing rapid social and environmental change.
Read the paper —Weighing the importance of animal body size in traditional food systems by Jeremy R. Brammer, Allyson K. Menzies, Laurence S. Carter, Xavier Giroux-Bougard, Manuelle Landry-Cuerrier, Melanie-Louise Leblanc, Mikhaela N. Neelin, Emily K. Studd, and Murray M. Humphries
