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Ecology, management and conservation in natural and modified habitats
RESEARCH ARTICLE

Genetic characteristics of translocated Indian bison (Bos gaurus gaurus) from the core area of the Kanha Tiger Reserve to the Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve in central India

Puneet Pandey A B # , Sujeet Kumar Singh C # , Rahul De https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4518-9607 A D , Reeta Sharma A E , B. Navaneethan A , M.P. Manjrekar A , R. Vishwakarma https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0804-3641 A , J. S. Chauhan F , H. S. Negi F , H. S. Pabla F , Aseem Shrivastava F , P. Nigam A , K. Sankar A , Bilal Habib https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0040-6214 A and S. P. Goyal https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2284-8796 A *
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Wildlife Institute of India, Chandrabani, Dehradun 248001, India.

B Conservation Genome Resource Bank for Korean Wildlife (CGRB), Building 85-812, Seoul National University College of Veterinary Medicine, Gwanak-ro, Gwanak-gu, Seoul 08826, South Korea.

C Amity Institute of Forestry and WIldlife, Amity University, Noida 201313, Uttar Pradesh, India.

D Department of Biological Sciences Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409, USA.

E Royal Rotterdam Zoological Gardens, Rotterdam, Netherlands.

F Madhya Pradesh Forest Department, Bhopal 462001, India.

* Correspondence to: goyalsp@wii.gov.in

# Shared first authorship

Handling Editor: Catherine Collins

Wildlife Research 52, WR24051 https://doi.org/10.1071/WR24051
Submitted: 9 April 2024  Accepted: 17 April 2025  Published: 13 May 2025

© 2025 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing

Abstract

Context

The Indian bison or gaur (Bos gaurus gaurus), one of the three extant subspecies, was once widely distributed. Gaur populations have significantly declined throughout India owing to poaching and other human pressures. The reintroduction of individuals is a standard tool for restoring a species population. The gaur population was declared locally extinct in the Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve (BTR), central India, in 1998. Therefore, the Indian Government decided to rebuild its population by translocating individuals from the Kanha Tiger Reserve (KTR) in central India. Genetics has been an integral part of ensuring population viability for a species; however, there is a lack of studies on wild gaur of KTR and the implications for translocations.

Aim

We investigated the utility of bovine microsatellites for the genetic assessment of reintroduced gaur population in KTR.

Methods

We used blood samples from 19 gaur individuals belonging to two subpopulations within the core area of the KTR, which were collected under the gaur reintroduction plan to the Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve (BTR) in central India.

Key results

We observed moderate genetic diversity (Ho = 0.58), a large proportion of unrelated individuals (71–78%), a lack of population structuring, no indication of inbreeding. This suggests the existence of non-random mating and the presence of connectivity between the two subpopulations.

Conclusions

Our results suggest the presence of a panmictic gaur gene pool because of their ability to disperse across subpopulations through the undisturbed, inviolate, high-quality habitat of the core area of the KTR.

Implications

The study has the following observation implications (i) regular monitoring of the habitat connectivity of the gaur to ensure nonrandom mating in KTR, (ii) retaining the founder genetic diversity considering the baseline genetic characteristics data of the reintroduced population of BTR, and (iii) use of optimized and harmonized bovid microsatellites to assess the population genetic structure of gaur across different geographical regions in the country using comparable data for augmentation of BTR population in future.

Keywords: central Indian landscape, cross-species amplification, genetic diversity, heterozygosity, microsatellite, population genetic structure, reintroduction.

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