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Not all is black and white: phylogeography and population genetics of the endemic blackbuck (Antilope cervicapra)

Conservation Genetics volume 24, pages 41–57 (2023)Cite this article

Abstract

Genetic diversity of organisms is an indicator of their long-term survival and can potentially be shaped by the extent of geneflow between populations. Geographical features and anthropogenic interferences can both obstruct and also facilitate animal movement, directly or indirectly. Such patterns have not been extensively studied across grasslands in the Indian subcontinent which is a mosaic of both natural and man-made topography. This study looks at genetic variation in an endemic ungulate, the Antilope cervicapra or blackbuck, throughout its distribution range. Using mitochondrial and nuclear (microsatellite) information, we find that different markers shed light on different aspects of their evolutionary history. Absence of robust geographical clustering in mitochondrial DNA indicate recent isolation in these populations, while lack of shared haplotypes between sampling locations suggests female philopatry. Nuclear data shows the presence of three genetic clusters in this species, pertaining to the Northern, Southern and Eastern regions of India. Our study also shows that an ancestral stock separated into two groups that gave rise to the North and South clusters and the East population was derived from the South at a later time period. Both microsatellite and mitochondrial data indicate that the population from the Eastern part of India is genetically distinct and the species as a whole shows signatures of having undergone recent genetic expansion. In spite of immense losses in grassland habitats across India, blackbucks seem to have well-adapted to human altered landscapes and their numbers are beginning to show an upward trend.

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Code availability

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Data availability

The DNA sequences used in this study have been uploaded to GenBank.

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Funding

This work was supported by grants to PK under the partnership between the Department of Biotechnology, Govt. of India, and Indian Institute of Science (DBT-IISc partnership) and permits to AJ from the state forest departments of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Gujarat and the village panchayat of Bhetanai in Orissa. AJ would like to thank Bibidishananda Basu and Kavya Lakshmikanth for helping out with part of the wet-lab work.

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    Ananya Jana & K. Praveen Karanth

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  1. Ananya Jana
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Correspondence to Ananya Jana.

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Jana, A., Karanth, K.P. Not all is black and white: phylogeography and population genetics of the endemic blackbuck (Antilope cervicapra). Conserv Genet 24, 41–57 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10592-022-01479-x

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Keywords

  • Microsatellite
  • Grassland
  • Ungulate
  • Indian subcontinent
  • Non-invasive