Context
Studies are being conducted over wildlife protection, which is threatened by urbanization, deforestation, loss of wildlife, and human-wildlife conflicts, through molecular ecology.
What is molecular ecology?
- Molecular ecology is a hybrid field that combines molecular biology techniques with ecological data to make sense of natural processes such as
- growth or decline of populations
- formation of new species
- extinctions
- invasiveness
- Genetic data from organisms are collected in the form of ‘molecular markers,’ which are biological molecules that may be used to distinguish between species, populations, or individuals.
- Specific DNA sequence, microsatellites, minisatellites and single nucleotide polymorphisms, as well as techniques such as DNA profiling/fingerprinting, can be applied to identify which country or population the poached animal came from.
How the molecular ecology is used in diversity management?
- Diversity studies: Genetic data is studied to find out the diversity and its patterns in the population.
- Population stability: The phenomenon of inbreeding and outbreeding is targeted to get the desired outcomes for population stabilization.
- Genetic diversity stabilization: The genetic make-up of a population can be rectified through the process of genetic rescues.
- Genetic rescues are carried out by introducing new individuals (which can add more genetic variation) into inbred populations to increase genetic diversity.
- Survival analysis: The specific gene study is beneficial for the study of the survival of species in a particular environment.
- For example, in India, molecular ecology studies on the critically endangered gharial and blackbuckreveal that the genetic diversities in managed populations of these animals are not high, painting a grim picture for their chances of survival.
- The genome-wide data on tigers suggests that compared to the tigers from Amur, Sumatran, and Malayan populations, Indian tigers have very high genetic diversity.
- Disease Management: Molecular ecology has now become an important part of wildlife disease management.
- Forensics: Molecular forensics using DNA barcoding has been used to identify species even from processed samples such as dried meat and powdered bones or horns.
- For animals, sequences from the mitochondrial gene COX1 or CO1 (cytochrome oxidase 1) are usually used.
