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Trends in Wildlife Connectivity Science from the Biodiverse and Human-Dominated South Asia

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Journal of the Indian Institute of Science Aims and scope

Abstract

The threat of habitat fragmentation and population isolation looms large over much of biodiversity in this human-dominated epoch. Species-rich South Asia is made particularly vulnerable by its high human density and anthropogenic habitat modification. Therefore, reliably estimating wildlife connectivity and the factors underpinning it become crucial in mitigating extinction risk due to isolation. We analysed peer-reviewed literature on connectivity and corridors for terrestrial mammals in South Asia to identify trends in connectivity research. We identify key research gaps and highlight future directions that may aid efforts to robustly study connectivity. We found a significant bias towards charismatic megafauna and their habitats. Methodologically, although we observed a range of approaches reflecting some of the advances and innovations in the field, several studies lacked data on animal movement/behaviour, leading to potentially biased inferences of how species disperse through human-modified landscapes. New avenues for connectivity research, though currently under-explored in South Asia, offer alternatives to the heavily used but less-reliable habitat suitability models. We highlight the advantages of landscape genetic methods that reflect effective dispersal and are made feasible through non-invasive and increasingly more cost-effective sampling methods. We also identify important gaps or areas of focus that need to be addressed going forward, including accounting for animal movement/behaviour, human impacts and landscape change for dynamic and adaptive connectivity planning for the future.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Pranav Chanchani and Jared Margulies for their informal comments, as well as two anonymous reviewers whose extensive feedback significantly improved the manuscript. We also thank Mansi Monga for data management work during this review to classify a subset of the papers with appropriate tags. Finally, the Coalition for Wildlife Corridors for playing a key role in bringing some of us together to work on this review.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. World Wide Fund for Nature-India, New Delhi, India

    Prachi Thatte

  2. National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bangalore, India

    Abhinav Tyagi & Tarsh Thekaekara

  3. SASTRA Deemed to be University, Thanjavur, India

    Abhinav Tyagi

  4. Network for Conserving Central India (NCCI), Nagpur, India

    Amrita Neelakantan

  5. Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Tirupati, India

    Meghana Natesh

  6. The Shola Trust, Nilgiris, India

    Mihika Sen & Tarsh Thekaekara

Authors
  1. Prachi Thatte
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  2. Abhinav Tyagi
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  3. Amrita Neelakantan
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  4. Meghana Natesh
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  5. Mihika Sen
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  6. Tarsh Thekaekara
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Correspondence to Prachi Thatte.

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Thatte, P., Tyagi, A., Neelakantan, A. et al. Trends in Wildlife Connectivity Science from the Biodiverse and Human-Dominated South Asia. J Indian Inst Sci 101, 177–193 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41745-021-00240-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41745-021-00240-6

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