M Sc Dissertation(WII)
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Item Subsidized Mammals: Understanding the mammalian interactions with garbage sites around Western- Rajaji Tiger Reserve, Uttarakhand(Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, 2024) Nagarale, Shashank; Habib, Bilal; Shrotriya, Shivam; Pandav, BivashAnthropogenic food subsidies in the form of garbage dumps are widespread across the globe. When such sites are found around protected areas/wildlife habitats, wildlife is observed to exploit these subsidies as food resources. Foraging on such human-derived foods may have a negative or positive impact on individual to community/ecosystem levels. It becomes important to know the species associated with garbage dumps when found around protected areas and understand the interactions happening at the garbage dumps. This study was conducted aiming to know the animals at risk and also increase our understanding of these novel setups. I deployed 13 IR camera traps at total 10 garbage sites resulting in a cumulative effort of 437 trap nights at the garbage site. The camera trap data was processed using Megadetector & SpSeg packages in python. This data was used to get the Relative Abundance Index with respect to 437 trap nights. Sambar (RAI= 8.35) was the species with the highest visitations at the garbage site, followed by Indian crested porcupine (RAI= 2.70) and spotted deer (RAI= 2.15). Synanthropes like rhesus macaque (RAI= 1.78 ) and wild pig (RAI= 1.67) were the most visitors following spotted deer. I hypothesised that synanthropic species will have higher visitations because of distribution outside protected areas, followed by omnivores from the forest area as compared to herbivores and carnivores from the forest areas because of their ability to exploit larger variety of food resources. The data from this study rejected this hypothesis as forest dwelling species like sambar and Indian crested porcupine visited these sites more as compared to other synanthropes. Lesser visitations by omnivores like golden jackal, small indian civet, small indian mongoose; carnivore like common leopard along with scavenger striped hyena was a result of the less percentage of poultry waste (0.33% at only one site) in the garbage sites. I collected data on variables such as distance of the garbage site from the protected area, human infrastructure and waterbody, also quantified the size of the garbage site in terms of perimeter, NDVI difference between the protected area and garbage site as a surrogate of vegetation cover, relative abundance of each species in the adjoining protected area and calculated the composite RAI values of human, dogs/cats and livestock as a disturbance measure . I quantified the garbage in broader categories using a 1 m2 quadrat which was divided into smaller sets of 25x25 cm2. A total of 39 plots were laid for all the garbage site. The categories quantified were food wrappers & food disposables, food materials, religious offerings, agriculture discards, dung plates, sanitary waste, construction waste, carcass & poultry waste, pharmaceutical waste, cloths and plastic and others. The relation between relative abundances within protected area and visitations at the garbage site was assessed using Spearman correlation test along with Wilcoxon test p-values. With the available dataset I used ANOSIM using ‘vegan’ package in R program v4.1.2 to investigate the effect by considering the dissimilarity of the communities between sites based on the RAI values of the species for each garbage site. Relative abundance from protected area was not related to visitation of the species at the garbage site. Out of the selected variables, the ANOSIM values suggested the effect of ‘distance between garbage site and protected area’ on forest species and synanthropes. The effect of the ‘size of garbage site’ on the species could not be tested as there was not much variation in the sizes of the garbage sites. Human, dogs/cats and livestock presence affected the forest species, suggesting their sensitivity towards disturbances, while synanthropes were found to have affinity with the NDVI difference between protected area and garbage sites (vegetation cover at the garbage site) and the ‘percentage of food materials available in the garbage site’. To understand the co-occurrences at the garbage site, I modified the probabilistic models for co-occurrences (Veech, 2013) to get pair-wise associations at the temporal scale of one hour. A total 13 mammals avoided co-occurring with humans (and vehicle) while nine with livestock and dogs. Co-occurrences were found to be there between sambar and Indian crested porcupine at two out of three religious sites and at a household site, suggesting high tolerance levels to each other’s presence at the garbage site to exploit the resources. One of the sites was visited by barking deer with spotted deer group/herd. This association by solitary living barking deer can be for foraging effectively by reducing vigilance efforts in a group.Item Visitation Pattern of Mammalian Communities at Waterholes in Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve(Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, 2021) Yathumon, M.A.; Nigam, Parag; Habib, Bilal; Gopi, G.V.Waterholes are an important component of management practices in wildlife conservation, especially in arid and semi-arid regions. It is of high conservation and management significance as it is a spatially restricted resource for wildlife. I studied visitation pattern of mammals at 54 waterholes in the core zone of Tadoba - Andhari Tiger Reserve, a dry deciduous forest in the central India. Visitations of mammal species were monitored continuously for four months using camera traps. Visitation frequencies of mammals at the waterholes were checked and compared between winter and summer seasons. Influences of (i) physical attributes of waterholes, (ii) distance between the waterholes and adjacent permanent water sources, (iii) distance to nearest road and (iv) the presence of tourism in the nearest road, on the visitations of mammals at waterholes were studied. It was found that there are differences in the number of visitations, total time spent and the average time spent in a visitation between mammal species and between same species in different seasons. Size of waterholes and artificial water supplementation influenced the visitations of some mammals at waterholes. Overlaps in the temporal visitation patterns of the prey species with that of the predator species were different for ambush predators and pursuit predators.Item How Disturbed are the Disturbed Ones ? Impacts of Anthropogenic Stressors on the Socio-Ecological Interactions of Terai Gray Langur (Semnopithecus hector) in Shivalik Hills(Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, 2021) Dwivedi, Divya; Habib, Bilal; Qureshi, QamarAnimals respond to the changes in their habitats numerically and behaviourally. Alterations caused by anthropogenic stresses, like habitat degradation, fragmentation, urbanisation, changes in land use patterns, etc., changes the ecology of most species. Understanding the patterns adopted by these species to successfully survive and reproduce in such habitats is of utmost importance. This study tried to understand the impacts of human disturbance on the socio-ecology of Terai Gray langurs in Shivalik landscape, by comparing the ecology of langur troops inside the protected forest with the troops in disturbed forest. Four troops of Terai Gray langur, of comparable sizes, two in each treatment were selected.Item Impacts of Road Related Disturbances on Mammalian and Vegetational Assemblages : A Case Study of SH-33 Passing Through Nagarahole Tiger Reserve, Karnataka(Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, 2019) Siva, R.; Habib, Bilal; Gubbi, SanjayUpcoming economies such as India need to strengthen their road network for the socioeconomic development of the country. While roads are important to the country, they are a threat to wildlife when they pass through the protected areas and other ecologically sensitive areas. Multiple impacts of roads on wildlife range from habitat loss, edge effects, vehicular traffic, pollution, animal mortality, barrier effect to invasion by alien flora and fauna. This project revealed the impacts of road-related disturbances on mammals and vegetation in Nagarahole Tiger Reserve, Karnataka. Mysore-Mananthavadi road (SH-33) is passing through the southern part of Nagarahole Tiger Reserve that has two segments in which one segment is decommissioned and another segment is closed for the vehicular traffic during the night. Here, I have compared the habitat use of mammals in these two segments using camera traps and assessed the impact of road-related disturbances on vegetation in this road by vegetation sampling. Vehicular density was estimated using the camera traps in these two segments.The study results revealed the avoidance of vehicular traffic segment by the mammals and activity pattern seems to be relatively unaffected by the vehicular traffic. It also shows the change in the vegetation composition and spread of invasive species due to road related disturbances.Item Response of Leopard (Panthera pardus fusca) in Varying Density of Tiger (Panthera tigris) in Rajaji National Park, Uttarakhand(Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, 2015) Rathore, Harshvardhan Singh; Pandav, Bivash; Habib, BilalApex predators hold a special position in ecosystems due to their well known top down effects. Intra-guild competition is an integral process that affects population dynamics of large carnivores and may cause trophic cascades. In India tiger and leopard are two large sympatric felids undergoing intra-guild competition. The two co-exist by segregating in their spatial, temporal and dietary niche. Rajaji National Park (RNP) provides an ideal condition to study interaction amongst large predators. Following human settlements relocation in the past decade, the tiger . population has recovered in eastern RNP whereas due to lack of connectivity it has declined in western RNP. Thus, RNP provides a perfect ecological setup to study responses of leopard and prey in varying tiger density gradient. I assessed prey abundance in RNP using line transect based distance sampling using software Distance 6.2. Leopard and tiger density- were also estimated by using camera trap pictures on a capture- mark recapture framework using spatially explicit capture- recapture models. Spatial separation was seen between the two carnivores by using density surface models. Principal prey, prey selection and their dietary overlap was also assessed. High abundance of major prey was seen with the density of chital ranging from 23.61±9.21 Isq.km in eastern RNP to 21.77±4.32/sq.km in western RNP and sambar ranging from 10.61±3.21/sq.km in eastern RNP to 15.65±2.52/sq.km in western RNP. The density estimates of leopard were 29.01± 4.00/100 ~q.km and 25.37 ± 2.63/100 sq.km for the eastern and western sector respectively. The density estimates of tiger were 3.03±0.95/100 sq.km and 0.28±0.23/100 sq.km (only two tiger) for the eastern and western sector respectively. Leopard diet was primarily composed of chital in eastern RNP, in the western sector it was dominated by sambar. Chital was the principal prey species of tiger in RNP. Spatial separation was seen between tiger and leopard in both the sectors of the park with leopards clearly avoiding the high intensity usage areas of tigers. This study has created baseline data for predator and prey in RNP and would be helpful in managing the park better and for future monitoring.Item A Whistle Amongst Growls : Dholes in a Multi Predator System in Dry Deciduous Forests of India(Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, 2015) Ghaskadbi, Pallavi; Habib, Bilal; Qureshi, QamarA significant amount of research has proved that there is a positive correlation between habitat heterogeneity/diversity and animal 'species diversity owing to the availability of more exploitable niches (Tews et al. 2004). On a spatial scale for free ranging large carnivores, a place like the Tadoba- Andhari Tiger Reserve has a low habitat heterogeneity, however, it shows a variety of species of both predators and prey in a small area. Studying the prey- predator interactions in such a system would lead to a better insight into large carnivore ecology. In contrast with the African Wild dog which enjoys much more attention of researchers and biologists, the Dhole has clearly not been a favourite. Being a social carnivore, there is a complex and dynamic fission and fusion of packs amongst Dholes. However, there is a grave lack of information on the pack dynamics of the Dhole. I attempted to conduct experiments to study one of the fundamental factors of social behaviour which is individual recognition.