Abstract
BackgroundThe Asiatic wild dog or dhole (Cuon alpinus) is a highly elusive, monophyletic, forest dwelling, social canid distributed across south and Southeast Asia. Severe pressures from habitat loss, prey depletion, disease, human persecution and interspecific competition resulted in global population decline in dholes. Despite a declining population trend, detailed information on population size, ecology, demography and genetics is lacking. Generating reliable information at landscape level for dholes is challenging due to their secretive behaviour and monomorphic physical features. Recent advances in non-invasive DNA-based tools can be used to monitor populations and individuals across large landscapes. In this paper, we describe standardization and validation of faecal DNA-based methods for individual identification of dholes. We tested this method on 249 field-collected dhole faeces from five protected areas of the central Indian landscape in the state of Maharashtra, India.ResultsWe tested a total of 18 cross-species markers and developed a panel of 12 markers for unambiguous individual identification of dholes. This marker panel identified 101 unique individuals from faecal samples collected across our pilot field study area. These loci showed varied level of amplification success (57–88%), polymorphism (3–9 alleles), heterozygosity (0.23–0.63) and produced a cumulative misidentification rate or PID(unbiased) and PID(sibs) value of 4.7 × 10−10 and 1.5 × 10−4, respectively, indicating a high statistical power in individual discrimination from poor quality samples.ConclusionOur results demonstrated that the selected panel of 12 microsatellite loci can conclusively identify dholes from poor quality, non-invasive biological samples and help in exploring various population parameters. This genetic approach would be useful in dhole population estimation across its range and will help in assessing population trends and other genetic parameters for this elusive, social carnivore.
Highlights
The Asiatic wild dog or dhole (Cuon alpinus) is a highly elusive, endangered, social canid distributed in south and southeast Asia (Johnsingh, 1982; Durbin et al, 2004) occupying a range of habitat types including alpine, temperate, sub-tropical and tropical forests (Durbin et al, 2004)
Study area The study was focused in five protected areas Melghat Tiger Reserve (MTR), Pench Tiger Reserve (PTR), Navegaon-Nagzira Tiger Reserve (NNTR), Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve (TATR) and Umred-Karandhla Wildlife Sanctuary (UKWLS) of the central Indian landscape in the state of Maharashtra, India
The results show that loci CXX608 and CXX140 were monomorphic in all amplified samples, and locus CPH6 has low amplification success rate (~35%) from faecal DNA and were removed from the panel
Summary
The Asiatic wild dog or dhole (Cuon alpinus) is a highly elusive, endangered, social canid distributed in south and southeast Asia (Johnsingh, 1982; Durbin et al, 2004) occupying a range of habitat types including alpine, temperate, sub-tropical and tropical forests (Durbin et al, 2004). Results: We tested a total of 18 cross-species markers and developed a panel of 12 markers for unambiguous individual identification of dholes This marker panel identified 101 unique individuals from faecal samples collected across our pilot field study area. Conclusion: Our results demonstrated that the selected panel of 12 microsatellite loci can conclusively identify dholes from poor quality, non-invasive biological samples and help in exploring various population parameters. This genetic approach would be useful in dhole population estimation across its range and will help in assessing population trends and other genetic parameters for this elusive, social carnivore
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