Demographic and genetic structure of a severely fragmented population of the endangered hog deer (Axis porcinus) in the Indo-Burma biodiversity hotspot

RESEARCH ARTICLE Demographic and genetic structure of a severely fragmented population of the endangered hog deer (Axis porcinus) in the Indo-Burma biodiversity hotspot Sangeeta Angom, Chongpi Tuboi, Mirza Ghazanfar Ullah Ghazi, Ruchi Badola, Syed Ainul HussainID* Wildlife Institute of India, Dehra Dun, Uttarakhand, India * hussain@wii.gov.in Abstract The population of the globally endangered hog deer (Axis porcinus) has declined severely across its geographic range. Intensive monitoring of its demographic and genetic status is necessary. We examined the demographic and genetic structure of a small hog deer popu- lation in Keibul Lamjao National Park (KLNP), located on the western fringe of the Indo- Burma biodiversity hotspot for conservation planning. The distribution pattern of hog deer in the Park was derived based on the presence/absence of faecal pellets in 1 km × 1 km grids. We used double-observer distance sampling method to derive the hog deer abundance and population structure and compared with previous data to derive the population trend. We determined the genetic diversity of the population through microsatellite screening and bot- tleneck detection. The overall pellet density was 0.34 ± 0.02 pellets km-2 restricted to only 22.34 ± 0.20 km2 area of the park. The estimated density of the deer in the park was 1.82– 4.32 individuals km-2. The population showed a declining trend from 2006–08 (p < 0.05, R2 = 0.916) with 8% annum-1 and an increasing trend from 2003–2018 (p < 0.05, R2 = 0.9304)

with 10% annum-1. The adult male-to-female ratio and fawn-to-doe ratio were 36.2 ± 1.9 males per 100 females and 16.5 ± 0.4 fawns per 100 females, respectively. The molecular examination suggested that the mean number of alleles at 23 loci was 2.70 ± 0.18, the observed heterozygosity (Ho) ranged from 0.26 to 0.63 (mean 0.42 ± 0.02), the expected heterozygosity (He) ranged from 0.23 to 0.73 (χ = 0.51 ± 0.03), and the polymorphic infor- mation content (PIC) ranged from 0.2 to 0.67 (χ = 0.43 ± 0.03) indicating a moderate level of genetic diversity. Although no bottleneck in the population was observed, the loss of genetic diversity may affect the evolutionary potential of the species at the site by limiting the selec- tion flexibility. Conservation planning coupled with scientific management regime will help in the long term persistence of the population in the region. PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0210382 February 6, 2020 1 / 16 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Angom S, Tuboi C, Ghazi MGU, Badola R, Hussain SA (2020) Demographic and genetic structure of a severely fragmented population of the endangered hog deer (Axis porcinus) in the Indo-Burma biodiversity hotspot. PLoS ONE 15(2): e0210382. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal. pone.0210382 Editor: Tzen-Yuh Chiang, National Cheng Kung University, TAIWAN Received: December 22, 2018 Accepted: December 17, 2019 Published: February 6, 2020 Copyright: © 2020 Angom et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the

Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files. Funding: The project under which the study was carried out was funded by the Wildlife Institute of India and Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change through the Wildlife Institute of India in Grant-in-aid funds. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis,