Habitat use patterns and food habits of the Kashmir red deer or Hangul (<i>Cervus elaphus hanglu</i>) in Dachigam National Park, Kashmir, India

Ahmad, Khursheed; Qureshi, Qamar; Agoramoorthy, Govindasamy; Nigam, Parag

doi:10.1080/03949370.2015.1018955

Cited by 17 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…The park is ecologically significant as it is known to harbor a unique variety of plants and animals, including the critically endangered Kashmir red stag, locally known as “Hangul”, endangered Himalayan black bear, Himalayan brown bear, Himalayan gray langur, musk deer and snow leopard. The national park has been extensively studied for its phytodiversity and soil physicochemical characteristics [ 1 ], as well as its endangered animals [ 2 , 3 , 4 ], but is poorly understood as far as its soil bacterial studies are concerned. The molecular level study on bacterial diversity in forest ecosystems of Kashmir revealed many novel bacterial lineages [ 5 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biochemical Characterization and Functional Analysis of Heat Stable High Potential Protease of Bacillus amyloliquefaciens Strain HM48 from Soils of Dachigam National Park in Kashmir Himalaya

et al. 2021

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A novel temperature stable alkaline protease yielding bacteria was isolated from the soils of Dachigam National Park, which is known to be inhabited by a wide variety of endemic plant and animal species of Western Himalaya. This high-potential protease producing isolate was characterized and identified as Bacillus amyloliquefaciens strain HM48 by morphological, Gram’s staining and biochemical techniques followed by molecular characterization using 16S rRNA approach. The extracellular protease of B. amyloliquefaciens HM48 was purified by precipitating with ammonium sulfate (80%), followed by dialysis and Gel filtration chromatography increasing its purity by 5.8-fold. The SDS–PAGE analysis of the purified enzyme confirmed a molecular weight of about ≈25 kDa. The enzyme displayed exceptional activity in a broad temperature range (10–90 °C) at pH 8.0, retaining its maximum at 70 °C, being the highest reported for this proteolytic Bacillus sp., with KM and Vmax of 11.71 mg/mL and 357.14 µmol/mL/min, respectively. The enzyme exhibited remarkable activity and stability against various metal ions, surfactants, oxidizing agent (H2O2), organic solvents and displayed outstanding compatibility with widely used detergents. This protease showed effective wash performance by exemplifying complete blood and egg-yolk stains removal at 70 °C and efficiently disintegrated chicken feathers making it of vital importance for laundry purpose and waste management. For functional analysis, protease gene amplification of strain HM48 yielded a nucleotide sequence of about 700 bp, which, when checked against the available sequences in NCBI, displayed similarity with subtilisin-like serine protease of B. amyloliquefaciens. The structure of this protease and its highest-priority substrate β-casein was generated through protein modeling. These protein models were validated through futuristic algorithms following which protein–protein (protease from HM48 and β-casein) docking was performed. The interaction profile of these proteins in the docked state with each other was also generated, shedding light on their finer details. Such attributes make this thermally stable protease novel and suitable for high-temperature industrial and environmental applications.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biochemical Characterization and Functional Analysis of Heat Stable High Potential Protease of Bacillus amyloliquefaciens Strain HM48 from Soils of Dachigam National Park in Kashmir Himalaya

et al. 2021

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“…The Department of Wildlife Protection, Government of Jammu & Kashmir in collaboration with Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun has been monitoring the hangul population by adopting scientifically robust methods since 2004. The information on the ecology of hangul is inadequate and only a few short terms ecological studies have been conducted majority of them dealing with habitat use, feeding habits, distribution and conservation assessment surveys [2-4,8,9]. Most importantly, the information on the genetic diversity of hangul population is lacking while similar studies have been conducted on other sympatric red deer species [10-12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Loss of genetic diversity and inbreeding in Kashmir red deer (Cervus elaphus hanglu) of Dachigam National Park, Jammu & Kashmir, India

et al. 2013

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BackgroundHangul (Cervus elaphus hanglu), the eastern most subspecies of red deer, is now confined only to the mountains in the Kashmir region of Jammu & Kashmir State of India. It is of great conservation significance as this is the last and only hope for Asiatic survivor of the red deer species in India. Wild population of free ranging hangul deer inhabiting in and around Dachigam National Park was genetically assessed in order to account for constitutive genetic attributes of hangul population using microsatellite markers.ResultsIn a pool of 36 multi-locus genotypes, 30 unique individuals were identified based on six microsatellite loci. The estimated cumulative probability of identity assuming all individuals were siblings (PID sibs) was 0.009 (9 in 1000). Altogether, 49 different alleles were observed with mean (± s.e.) allelic number of 8.17 ± 1.05, ranging from 5 to 11 per locus. The observed heterozygosity ranged between 0.08 and 0.83, with mean 0.40 ± 0.11 and the inbreeding coefficient ranged between −0.04 and 0.87 with mean 0.38 ± 0.15. Majority of loci (5/6) were found to be informative (PIC value > 0.5). All loci deviated from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium except Ca-38 (P > 0.05) and none of the pairs of loci showed significant linkage disequilibrium except the single pair of Ca-30 and Ca-43 (P < 0.05).ConclusionsThe preliminary findings revealed that hangul population is significantly inbred and exhibited a low genetic diversity in comparison to other deer populations of the world. We suggest prioritizing the potential individuals retaining high heterozygosity for ex situ conservation and genetic monitoring of the hangul population should be initiated covering the entire distribution range to ensure the long term survival of hangul. We speculate further ignoring genetics attributes may lead to a detrimental effect which can negatively influence the reproductive fitness and survivorship of the hangul population in the wild.

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“…The transects were placed along walking trails (human trails used to collect fodder) and existing paths (minor trails used by domestic or wild animals), which have frequently been used to determine habitat use of wild ungulates (Sathyakumar, 1994;Ahmad et al, 2016;Kunwar et al, 2016;Syed and Ilyas, 2016). A possible bias appearing due to this transect design can be caused by roads that do not constitute a representative sample of habitats (Garton et al, 2004), or -for ungulates living in groups -there may be a strong negative relationship with human activities on trails open to all visitors (Blake et al, 2017).…”

Section: Field Data Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecological Factors Determining Barking Deer Distribution and Habitat Use in the Mid-Hills of Nepal

et al. 2022

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Barking deer is found in dense tropical and subtropical forests of Asia. It is listed as “least concerned” by the International Union of Conservation of Nature and as “vulnerable” in Nepal, where it is also protected. Due to the habitat loss and fragmentation by human activities, barking deer abundance is decreasing, which may even ultimately lead to its extinction. This in turn might negatively affect local ecosystem such as the abundance of the endangered common leopard, for which barking deer is the main prey species in the mid-hills of Nepal. We therefore need to know factors affecting barking deer abundance and its habitat preferences. To determine these factors, we recorded barking deer either by direct sighting or by any evidence of its indirect presence observed through transect surveys in January and February, 2019. To analyze habitat preference, the presence of barking deer was set to 1 if the barking deer or any sign of its presence were observed “used plots,” or to 0 if the barking deer or any sign of its presence were not observed (“habitat availability plot”). We measured main four ecological drivers such as forest management regime, microclimate, disturbance and food resources, which include 11 habitat characteristics in spots where barking deer was present, and in randomly selected spots. We found that elevation, slope, distance from settlement, presence of tree species, depth of leaf litter and percentage cover of leaf litter were most significantly affecting its presence. These results can serve as guidelines for local authorities to prevent decline in abundance of barking deer.

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Habitat use patterns and food habits of the Kashmir red deer or Hangul (Cervus elaphus hanglu) in Dachigam National Park, Kashmir, India

Cited by 17 publications

References 32 publications

Biochemical Characterization and Functional Analysis of Heat Stable High Potential Protease of Bacillus amyloliquefaciens Strain HM48 from Soils of Dachigam National Park in Kashmir Himalaya

Biochemical Characterization and Functional Analysis of Heat Stable High Potential Protease of Bacillus amyloliquefaciens Strain HM48 from Soils of Dachigam National Park in Kashmir Himalaya

Loss of genetic diversity and inbreeding in Kashmir red deer (Cervus elaphus hanglu) of Dachigam National Park, Jammu & Kashmir, India

Ecological Factors Determining Barking Deer Distribution and Habitat Use in the Mid-Hills of Nepal

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