Articles Related to Wildlife
Causes of Morbidity and Mortality of Wildlife Species Presented to a Wildlife Clinic in East Tennessee, USA, 2000–2011
To determine the causes of wildlife morbidity and mortality in East Tennessee, we performed a retrospective analysis using 14,303 records from cases presented to the wildlife clinic of the University of Tennessee between 2000 and 2011. The cases were first categorized into herptile (includes reptiles and amphibians), mammal, or avian and then classified into 1 of 20 groups based on the primary admitting/presenting sign. The top reasons for presentation were trauma, found abandoned/orphaned, hit by automobile, cat-related injury, and dog-related injury. Overall mortality was 45.3% for the herptile cases, 57.6% for mammal cases, and 65.1% for avian cases. There are a variety of reasons animals were presented to the clinic, and some appear to be attributed to anthropogenic factors such as automobiles (n = 1253) and habitat destruction (n = 218), while the origin of others, such as trauma and disease remain unknown. This study confirms the importance of monitoring wildlife morbidity and mortality as an indicator of ecosystem health and of focusing efforts to reduce the anthropogenic threat on native habitats and resident wildlife populations.
Wildlife Forensic: Current Techniques and their limitations
The wildlife includes undomesticated and diverse forms of floral and faunal species, which is essential for ecological balance and human survival. The poaching and illegal trade has resulted in sharp decline of many wild species of flora and fauna around the world. The need of the time therefore is to utterly focus on wildlife protection for the sustainable development of biosphere and future viability of human beings. In this review we have focused on different techniques being utilized in wildlife forensic science for identification of wildlife species as well as their geographical origin. These techniques can be employed to control the wildlife crimes and convict the criminals involved in illegal trade of wildlife flora, fauna and their products. These techniques include footprints analyses, morphological and anatomical studies,
Genetic Characterization and Sequence Variations in 12S rRNA of Mitochondrial Gene in Three Indian Civets (Viverridae) Species: Implication in Wildlife Forensics
Comparative genomics of 12S and 16S rRNAs, cytochrome b (Cyt b) and the control region (CR) of mtDNA genome are commonly used in phylogenetics and wildlife forensics. We document the genetic characteristics and sequence variations of 12S rRNA (384 bp) in Indian civets, viz., the common palm civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus) (n=9), small Indian civet (Viverricula indica) (n=7) and Himalayan palm civet (Paguma larvata) (n=5). The nucleotide compositions vary from 17.6% to 36.3%, and found one to two haplotypes in all three civet species. Observed sequence divergence was 0.001 to 0.002 and 0.057 to 0.110 within and between species respectively. The nucleotide diversity was 0.00102 to 0.00184. Tajima’s D value was negative (-0.097256 to -1.36240) but statistically non-significant in all three species. Based on genetic characteristics, we discuss the use of observed forensically informative nucleotide sequencing (FINS) and topology in species identification for forensic purposes among these three civet species.
