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Updated: Oct 14, 2025

A Noninvasive Hair Sampling Technique to Obtain High Quality DNA from Elusive Small Mammals
Published on: March 13, 2011
Population genetic attributes of common leopard (Panthera pardus fusca) from Uttarkashi, Western Himalayas
Vinaya Kumar Singh1, Sujeet Kumar Singh2, Bheem Dutt Joshi1
1Zoological Survey of India, New Alipore, Calcutta, West Bengal, 700053, India.
Background:
The common leopard (Panthera pardus fusca), which persists in most of its historic range, is experiencing steady population decline due to habitat loss, anthrophonic disturbances, illegal poaching for their body parts, and retaliatory killings in response to the leopard-human conflicts.
Methods And Results:
We analysed 143 scats samples and identified 32 unique leopards following a selected panel of seven loci with cumulative PID sibs 5.30E-04. We observed moderate genetic diversity at nuclear (Ho = 0.600 ± 0.06) and mitochondrial markers (Hd = 0.569 ± 0.009; π = 0.001 ± 0.0002) and found sub-structuring in the leopard population at Uttarkashi, Western Himalayas.
Conclusions:
The present study exhibits the utility of non-invasive genetics in monitoring the leopard population and paves the path to investigate population genetic parameters in further studies.
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