PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Paw prints and feces offer new hope for saving tigers

Paw prints and feces offer new hope for saving tigers
2010-11-19
(Press-News.org) As experts gather in St Petersburg, Russia for next week's Tiger Summit, fewer than 3,200 tigers survive in the wild worldwide. More than half live in India, where they are spread over a vast area (100,000 sq km) of forest.

According to Dr Yadvendradev Jhala of the Wildlife Institute of India, lead author of the new study: "Tigers are cryptic, nocturnal and occur at low densities so they are extremely difficult to monitor. Unless we know how many tigers are left in the wild, and whether their numbers are increasing or decreasing, we will not be able to conserve them."

Until now, tiger numbers have been monitored either by their paw prints (known as pugmarks) or by using camera traps. Although wildlife agencies use paw prints to identify individual animals, scientists regard this as an inaccurate way of monitoring tiger numbers. And while camera trap mark-recapture is reliable, it requires highly-trained personnel and is so expensive and labour intensive that it cannot be widely used.

In search of a low-cost, scientifically-robust monitoring method, Dr Jhala and colleagues worked at 21 different sites in the forests of Central and North India collecting two tiger signs– paw prints and faeces. "Tiger faeces are the size of large beetroot and have a characteristic pungent, musky odour. Fresh tiger faeces are normally accompanied by urine sprays that smell like well-cooked basmati rice," Dr Jhala explains.

When they compared this data with that from camera traps at the same sites, they found they could estimate tiger numbers as accurately by using the two tiger signs – paw prints and faeces – as they could with camera traps, but for a fraction of the price. For each site, it cost US$1,240 and took 220 person-days to collect data on paw prints and faeces, compared with US$17,000 and 720 person-days for camera trapping.

The results have crucial implications for conserving tigers and other endangered species worldwide. "By showing that it is possible to accurately estimate tiger numbers from their paw prints and faeces, we have opened up a new way of cost-effectively keeping our finger on the pulse of tiger populations and gauging the success of conservation programmes. This approach could be applied to monitoring other endangered species across vast landscapes," Dr Jhala says.



INFORMATION:

Yadvendradev Jhala et al (2010), 'Can the abundance of tigers be assessed from their signs?', doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2664.2010.01901.x, is published in the Journal of Applied Ecology on 19 November 2010.

[Attachments] See images for this press release:
Paw prints and feces offer new hope for saving tigers

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Cough medicine could help doctors identify how breast cancer patients metabolize tamoxifen

2010-11-19
Cough medicine could be used as way of predicting how well individual patients metabolise tamoxifen used in the treatment of their breast cancer, according to new research presented at the 22nd EORTC-NCI-AACR [1] Symposium on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics in Berlin today (Friday). The findings suggest that it could be possible to use cough suppressant syrup as a probe, which would enable doctors to identify patients with altered metabolism and use this information to improve individual treatment, making it more effective and reducing the chances of side-effects. ...

Researchers find new target for stopping tumors developing their own blood supply

2010-11-19
Researchers have found that a newly developed drug, which is aimed at a particular receptor involved in the development of blood vessels that sustain tumour growth, is active in patients with advanced cancers and, in some cases, has halted the progress of the disease. The drug, ACE-041, targets a different molecular pathway to other anti-angiogenesis drugs and may provide a new option to treat cancer. Results from a phase I clinical study of ACE-041 were presented at the 22nd EORTC-NCI-AACR [1] Symposium on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics in Berlin today (Friday). ...

UCLA team uncovers mechanism behind organ transplant rejection

UCLA team uncovers mechanism behind organ transplant rejection
2010-11-19
UCLA researchers have pinpointed the culprit behind chronic rejection of heart, lung and kidney transplants. Published in the Nov. 23 edition of Science Signaling, their findings suggest new therapeutic approaches for preventing transplant rejection and sabotaging cancer growth. The team focused on the mechanism behind narrowing of the donor's grafted blood vessels, which blocks blood from reaching the transplanted organ. Starved of oxygen and other nutrients, the organ eventually fails, forcing the patient back on the transplant waiting list. "Chronic rejection ...

In fending off diseases, plants and animals are much the same, research shows

2010-11-19
It may have been 1 billion years since plants and animals branched apart on the evolutionary tree but down through the ages they have developed strikingly similar mechanisms for detecting microbial invasions and resisting diseases. This revelation was arrived at over a period of 15 years by teams of researchers from seemingly disparate fields who have used classical genetic studies to unravel the mysteries of disease resistance in plants and animals, according to a historical overview that will appear in the Nov. 19 issue of the journal Science. The report, written ...

Global economic woes make universal access to aids drugs unlikely, Stanford analysis shows

2010-11-19
STANFORD, Calif. — Universal access to lifesaving AIDS drugs — a United Nations' Millennium Development Goal that officials hoped to accomplish by 2010 — would require a staggering $15 billion annual investment from the international community at a time when the economic downturn is challenging continued funding for relief efforts, according to a new analysis by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The study underscores the need for groups combating AIDS to rethink how they allocate scarce resources, as what was once the centerpiece of the movement ...

Care for prisoners will improve public health

2010-11-19
GALVESTON, Texas — In a comprehensive global survey, researchers in Texas and England have concluded that improving the mental and physical health of inmates will improve public health. In their article, "The health of prisoners," Seena Fazel of the University of Oxford and Jacques Baillargeon of the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, write that caring for the mental and physical health of prisoners has a direct and important impact on public health that should be recognized. Their findings, to be published Online First in the British medical journal The ...

Magnetic trapping will help unlock the secrets of anti-matter

2010-11-19
A clearer understanding of the Universe, its origins and maybe even its destiny is a significant step closer, thanks to new research. As part of a major international experiment called ALPHA*, based at CERN in Switzerland, researchers have helped to achieve trapping and holding atoms of 'anti-hydrogen', which has not previously been possible. The project involves physicists at Swansea University led by Professor Mike Charlton, Dr Niels Madsen and Dr Dirk Peter van der Werf and the University of Liverpool under Professor Paul Nolan, all supported by the Engineering ...

Gangster birds running protection racket give insight into coevolution

2010-11-19
Like gangsters running a protection racket, drongos in the Kalahari Desert act as lookouts for other birds in order to steal a cut of their food catch. The behaviour, revealed in research funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) published in Evolution and reported in Nature's Research Highlights today (18 November), may represent a rare example of two species evolving from a parasitic to a mutualistic relationship. The team from the Universities of Bristol, Cambridge and Cape Town showed that victimised pied babblers gained a mitigating ...

Shockwaves work better than surgery for smaller kidney stones trapped in the ureter

2010-11-19
Different techniques should be used to remove single stones that have become lodged in the distal ureter after being expelled by the kidney, depending on whether they are under or above one centimetre, according to the December issue of BJUI. Surgeons from the Department of Urology at University Federico II, Naples, Italy, believe that extracorporeal shockwave lithotripsy (ESWL) - which uses a non-invasive acoustic pulse to break down ureteric stones - should be the treatment of first choice in patients with a stone of up to 1cm. Patients with a stone over 1cm should ...

Video games lead innovation in the e-services economy

2010-11-19
The video games industry is leading the overall trend of transformation of digital products into e-services, according to the report "Born digital/ Grown digital – Assessing the future competitiveness of the EU video games software industry" published today by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre. Online games, for example, play a major role in the digital content convergence process based on digital distribution of different types of content and the diffusion of interactive capabilities for consumers. This phenomenon is having an effect on the movie, video, ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Scientists shoot lasers into brain cells to uncover how illusions work

Your ecosystem engineer was a dinosaur

New digital cognitive test for diagnosing Alzheimer's disease

Parents of children with health conditions less confident about a positive school year

New guideline standardizes consent for research participants in Canada

Research as reconciliation: Oil sands and health

AI risks overwriting history and the skills of historians have never been more important, leading academic outlines in new paper

The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology: Higher doses of semaglutide can safely enhance weight loss and improve health for adults living with obesity, two new clinical trials confirm

Trauma focused therapy shows promise for children struggling with PTSD

School meals could drive economic growth and food system transformation

Home training for cerebellar ataxias

Dry eyes affect over half the general population, yet only a fifth receive diagnosis and treatment

Researchers sound warning about women with type 2 diabetes taking oral HRT

Overweight and obesity don’t always increase the risk of an early death, Danish study finds

Cannabis use associated with a quadrupling of risk of developing type 2 diabetes, finds study of over 4 million adults

Gestational diabetes linked to cognitive decline in mothers and increased risk of developmental delays, ADHD and autism among children

Could we use eye drops instead of reading glasses as we age?

Patients who had cataracts removed or their eyesight corrected with a new type of lens have good vision over all distances without spectacles

AI can spot which patients need treatment to prevent vision loss in young adults

Half of people stop taking popular weight-loss drug within a year, national study finds

Links between diabetes and depression are similar across Europe, study of over-50s in 18 countries finds

Smoking increases the risk of type 2 diabetes, regardless of its characteristics

Scientists trace origins of now extinct plant population from volcanically active Nishinoshima

AI algorithm based on routine mammogram + age can predict women’s major cardiovascular disease risk

New hurdle seen to prostate screening: primary-care docs

MSU researchers explore how virtual sports aid mental health

Working together, cells extend their senses

Cheese fungi help unlock secrets of evolution

Researchers find brain region that fuels compulsive drinking

Mental health effects of exposure to firearm violence persist long after direct exposure

[Press-News.org] Paw prints and feces offer new hope for saving tigers