Cultural roles of primates in an Amazonian urban center

Abstract

Primate species in the Neotropics are undergoing increasing anthropogenic threats, including unsustainable trade and consumption by rapidly urbanizing communities. Yet the diverse cultural and symbolic factors contributing to primate trade and consumption are understudied, which inhibits the design of sound conservation policies for regulating primate utilization. In this scoping study, we administered an online survey seeking to characterize the ecological, market-based, and symbolic roles of primates in Iquitos, Peru, a rapidly urbanizing center of the Peruvian Amazon. We assessed the salience of each inferred taxa and frequencies of respondents indicating different roles that primates play in the urban system. Results suggest that primate species across sixteen inferred genera and five families play diverse cultural roles in the city of Iquitos, including as food (subsistence and consumption as traditional practice), for use as body parts or live individuals, depictions in art and stories, and as symbols to attract tourists to businesses and to promote conservation. The most salient species based on survey responses also held high conservation value (i.e. were Endangered or Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List). These preliminary findings suggest that conservation measures aimed at reducing primate trade by targeting economic incentives and commercial flows alone may be ineffective in culturally diverse Amazon cities. Future research should assess the potential to leverage primate symbolic values and meanings in conservation efforts in light of increased rural–urban migration, infrastructure development, and tourism in the urbanizing Amazon.