A partilha de alimentos entre famílias de pescadores do litoral potiguar sob a perspectiva da ecologia humana

Abstract

Food sharing is a common practice in small groups and it is understood by many authors as a behavior shaped by evolution, whose goals would be to decrease the risks of food shortage in harsher periods, to favor kin, and indirectly, favor one’s own individual fitness, to avoid conflicts, and even to establish alliances and partnerships. In this context, the current study describes the diet and investigates the food sharing behavior among families from an artisanal, but commercial, fishing village in the municipality of Touros, Rio Grande do Norte State (NE Brazil) with a high dependency on fishing resources affected by seasonal environmental fluctuations. The study was divided in two parts, here presented as two distinct chapters. For the first chapter, 32 families were sampled, after being divided in two groups of 16 families each: one exclusively dependent (FD) and another non-exclusively dependent on fisheries (NFD) as its main economic activity. The diet of these families was registered through the 24h- recall method along 10 consecutive days per month both in January (locally considered the most productive month for fisheries) and in June (considered the least productive month for fisheries). The diet and food sharing of the FD families were compared to the NFD for the high and low fisheries productivity period. This comparison showed that both groups, regardless of their dependence level on fisheries, have their diet and food sharing directly affected by the fisheries success. However, FD families tended to share slightly more food in periods of high productivity and they were also more subjected to a lower quality diet in periods of food shortage than NFD families. One of the likely explanations for such differences is the fact that FD families are more subjected to environmental unpredictability and sharing would help decrease such uncertainty. Such higher unpredictability associated to a consequent lower income would also explain the ingestion of lower nutritional quality food during shortage periods. For the second chapter, only the FD families were sampled, although in this case the sample took place along seven consecutive days per month during 12 months, between September 2011 and August 2012 (the three extra sampling days in January and June were not considered in this chapter), which allo wed the register of diet, food sharing and fisheries along the whole year. To investigate the food sharing behavior of these families, some evolutionary models were tested, such as kinship selection, reciprocal altruism, and tolerated theft (or tolerated scrounge), besides physical aspects that could indirectly support some of these models, such as geographical distance. These models were used with the intent of explaining the strategies used by these families in order to decrease the nutritional risks brought about by fisheries seasonal fluctuations. The results showed that FD families shared food mostly due to reciprocal altruism, and, secondarily due to the distance between households. Families tended to share more and more often with families that paid their favor back, but especially with those that were living geographically close. Despite the commercial insertion of this group, basal mechanisms, such as reciprocal altruism, still work, probably because the essential conditions for its continuation are still there, such as living in small groups and having repetitive interactions between cooperative pairs. This suggests that commerce, with all of its likely associated socioeconomic changes, is not necessarily a disruptor of evolutionary cooperation mechanisms (at least for reciprocal altruism), probably as long as other conditions, such as group size and constant interactions, are kept. As such, this study not only details how the diet and food sharing of coastal families are affected directly and indirectly by fisheries, but it also helps understand cooperation maintenance mechanisms regarding food sharing.