Identification of Galliformes through Forensically Informative Nucleotide Sequencing (FINS) and its Implication in Wildlife Forensics

Abstract

Galliformes are hunted for the demand of their attractive feathers and to supply a cheap animal food for the rural communities. In such cases, species identification through visual inspection of the meat or based on feather morphometrics is a challenging task for the law enforcement agencies to enforce the Wildlife Protection Act (WPA). Here, we extracted DNA from the individual feathers of unknown species encountered during field surveys and two mitochondrial genes (12S rRNA and Cytochrome b) were amplified using universal primers for species identification. Most homologous sequences were retrieved using NCBI-BLAST for each generated sequence of both the genes. Neighbor-Joining trees based on Kimura 2 parameter distance matrices in FINS analysis identified the species from the individual feather with strong bootstrap support. Nine species specific polymorphic sites were found in the partial sequence of Cytochrome b gene that differentiated Pavo cristatus to Pavo muticus imperator. Our study highlighted the importance of feathers in identifying the species and their applicability in wildlife offence cases using FINS approach.