Dr. Samrat Mondol: Understanding disturbance impacts on wildlife health
Stress is often a culprit in human autoimmune diseases and health related conditions, so it makes sense that it would also impact animal health. Assistant professor of conservation biology Dr. Samrat Mondol at the Wildlife Institute of India uses molecular tools to examine disturbance impacts on the health of large carnivores, such as leopards and tigers.
I met with Mondol on campus at WII to discuss his work as a teacher and researcher. He gave me a tour of the WII Wildlife Forensic and Conservation Genetics Cell where he works — a state-of-the art forensic and research laboratory for conducting DNA analysis of endangered species and other animals. We walked past rows of bones, multi-colored vials, petri dishes and microscopes, and I learned about the role of sequencers, centrifuges, polymerase chain reaction machines and other essential technologies used to crack wildlife crimes and aid the work of researchers.
Mondol said that natural calamities such as forest fire, habitat encroachment, grazing and poaching are among the disturbances that might affect an animal's health. Each species has its own issues in terms of survival. If pressures continue for months, then stress takes a toll on an animal's health, and it will be more prone to disease; its bodily functions will change, immune functions will decline, and its reproductive capacities will also likely alter.
Fecal samples provide excellent information about an animal's nutrition, stress and reproductive functions through hormone metabolites. Scat samples contain DNA and a number of excreted hormones, which Mondol extracts and measures. He studies the endocrine variations for signs of weakened immune functions, reproductive capacity and stresses from diet, such as whether or not a tiger is getting enough food to eat. Mondol examines this information relative to the disturbance impacts in that animal's habitat.
Mondol said that establishing a baseline to determine if a tiger is actually stressed in its habitat is a difficult but doable experiment. Comparative models could be created to show a gradient of disturbance based on data collected from tiger habitat where there are higher disturbances, with other areas where disturbances are lower, such as in Bandipur and Nagarahole National Parks in Karnataka. In these parks, living conditions for tigers are good because there is more prey, less grazing, and fewer humans. Tigers in healthy habitat could act as a control population for those in disturbed areas. He is currently working to create such a baseline in a collaborative research project with tiger scientist Dr. Ullas Karanth in the Malenad-Mysore landscape of Karnataka. The work examines hormone patterns of stress and nutritional status, and how these two factors combine to affect reproductive functions in large carnivores over the years. Karanth and his team have already generated extensive information about animal density and wildlife disturbances in this area. Mondol said that knowing these ecological parameters is required to make sense of the physiological information.
Mondol is correlating the ecological data with the endocrine measurements to quantify disturbance impact and assess how conditions in one area differ from the next. Analysis at different disturbance gradients will provide an idea of the kinds of problems tigers are experiencing in different areas. A picture will emerge of the health of the entire population from that area, like whether tigers are stressed due to a shortage of food or pressures from grazing. Mondol said knowing this information will prompt many more objective approaches to wildlife management. The models could also give an advantage to understanding population dynamics.
Mondol is currently in the process of setting up an endocrinology wildlife facility for hormonal analysis, which he said would be useful for assessing health of both captive and wild populations.
