Traditional knowledge and use of wild mushrooms by Mixtecs or Ñuu savi, the people of the rain, from Southeastern Mexico

Our study showed that conservation and adaptation of ancestral mycological knowledge survives mainly through oral transmition, maintenance of cultural identity, forest protection, preservation native language and also paradoxically through the current socieconomical marginality among the Mixtec people. We also found that those studied communities with a combination of higher vegetation cover of natural pine and oak forests, lower soil erosion and higher economic marginalization showed a greater richness and knowledge of wild mushrooms. Use and sustainable management of wild mushrooms can be an alternative for local integrated development, but local knowledge and traditional worldview should be included into the regional programs of Mixtec biocultural conservation.