Bengaluru : The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) has conducted a study to find how blackbucks (Indian antelopes) can survive both human-made and natural challenges in India. The study was conducted by Ananya Jana and K. Praveen Karnath and was shown in an IISc press release.

The study states that blackbucks are found exclusively in the northern, southern, and eastern regions of India, with the animals grouped into three large clusters. These clusters find it difficult to move from one location to another due to humans blocking them because of their homes, and due to the large distances that separates each cluster. Human activities like cutting down trees and building dams has also divided natural landscapes, restricting the blackbucks to small areas, and ensuring that they do not find mates to reproduce more blackbucks, reducing their genetic diversity. Prof. Praveen Karanth at the  Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES of the IISc), explains that genetic diversity allows blackbucks to more easily adapt to changing environments. Ananya Jana, the study’s author and former PhD student at CES, also said that blackbuck populations may be genetically constricted and due to this, there is the possibility of them getting incurring inbreeding depression i.e., decreased biological fitness because of inbreeding.

Karnath and Jana collected multiple blackbuck droppings from 12 different locations across eight states in India. The droppings were taken back to their laboratory, where DNA samples were extracted to study the blackbuck’s genetic makeup. Computational tools were used to map geographic locations with the genetic data, and simulations were run to see how the modern-day blackbuck clusters evolved from their common ancestors.

It was found that the ancestral blackbucks splintered off into the northern and southern clusters, with the eastern cluster believed to have emerged from the southern cluster. It was also found that female blackbucks mostly stayed within their native populations, while males left their populations to move on to other blackbuck groups, thus spreading their genes and contributing to the geneflow. Research found these pieces of information through unique mitochondrial signatures found in each cluster. The data also revealed that there was an increase in the blackbuck population in contrast to the recent past.

Future studies will see researchers trying to understand how blackbucks have survived in spite of challenges made by humans to their landscape. This will be done by studying changes in their DNA and gut microbiomes.

You can read the IISc press release here: https://iisc.ac.in/events/the-resilience-of-blackbucks/