IISc study sheds lights on resilience of blackbucks in face of natural and human-induced challenges

It shows how the species have managed to survive in a human-dominated landscape

A new study conducted by the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) has shed light on how blackbucks in India have fared in the face of natural and human-induced challenges to their survival.

The blackbuck is found only in the Indian subcontinent. While males have corkscrew-shaped horns and black-to-dark brown coats, the females are fawn-coloured. The animals are mainly seen in three broad clusters across India that pertain to the northern, the southern, and the eastern regions.

This geographic separation as well as dense human habitation between the clusters would be expected to make it difficult for them to move from one location to another, said IISc.

According to IISc, the study conducted by Praveen Karanth, Professor at the Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES), IISc, and Ananya Jana, a former PhD student from CES, is among the first of its kind in its scope, which involved analysing the genetic profiles of blackbucks found across the country.

Mr. Karanth and Ms. Jana, who are senior and first authors of the study, published in Conservation Genetics, collected faecal samples of blackbucks from 12 different locations spread across eight States of India.

The researchers tracked the animals on foot and in vehicles from a distance to collect the samples. In the lab, they extracted and sequenced the DNA from the faecal samples to study the genetic makeup of blackbucks, and deployed computational tools to map the geographic locations with the genetic data. The team also used simulations to trace how the three present-day clusters may have evolved from their common ancestor.

What they found was that an ancestral blackbuck population first split into two groups: the northern and the southern cluster. The eastern cluster — even though geographically close to the northern cluster — seems to have emerged from the southern cluster.