Journal of Threatened Taxa |
www.threatenedtaxa.org | 26 April 2020 | 12(5): 15661–15663
ISSN 0974-7907 (Online) | ISSN 0974-7893
(Print)
doi: https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.5162.12.5.15661-15663
#5162 | Received 17 February 2020 | Final
received 24 February 2020 | Finally accepted 17 April 2020
On the occurrence of Honey Badger
Mellivora capensis
(Mammalia: Carnivora: Mustelidae) in the
northern Eastern Ghats of Andhra Pradesh, India
Vikram Aditya 1, Yogesh Pasul 2 & Ganesh Thyagarajan
3
1–3 Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the
Environment (ATREE), Royal
Enclave, Srirampura, Jakkur,
Bengaluru, Karnataka 560064, India.
1 vikram.aditya@atree.org
(corresponding author), 2 yogesh.pasul@gmail.com, 3 tganesh@atree.org
Editor: H.N. Kumara, Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural
History, Coimbatore, India. Date of publication: 26 April
2020 (online & print)
Citation:
Aditya, V., Y. Pasul & G. Thyagarajan
(2020). On the
occurrence of Honey Badger Mellivora capensis (Mammalia: Carnivora: Mustelidae)
in the northern Eastern Ghats of Andhra Pradesh, India. Journal of Threatened Taxa 12(5): 15661-15663. https://doi.org/10.11609/jott.5162.12.5.15661-15663
Copyright: © Aditya et al. 2020. Creative
Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
JoTT allows unrestricted use, reproduction,
and distribution of this article in any medium by providing adequate credit to
the author(s) and the source of publication.
Funding: The Rufford Foundation.
Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.
Acknowledgements: We are thankful to the Rufford
Foundation for funding this project, Idea Wild for the camera traps, and the
Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund for their continued support. We
thank the Andhra Pradesh Forest Department for providing field permits for this
study. We are grateful to Aravind Turram and V B
Chandrasekaran for their support in the field.
The Honey Badger Mellivora
capensis Schreber, 1776
popularly known as the Ratel, is a monotypic species of the small carnivore
family Mustelidae, and is the sole member of its subfamily
Mellivorinae.
Although currently classified as Least Concern (LC) by the World
Conservation Union (IUCN), its population is decreasing and sightings are
extremely rare (Do Linh San et al. 2016).
The Honey Badger is widely distributed throughout Africa
and western & southern Asia (Begg et al. 2005; Do
Linh San et al. 2016), including most of India (Prater
1980; Menon & Daniel 2003). Although
their status and distribution have been well documented in parts of Africa and
western Asia (Kruuk & Mills 1983; Begg et al. 2003, 2005), there have been few studies on
them from across different parts of India (Kumara
& Singh 2007; Gupta et al. 2012; Gubbi et al. 2014; Krishnan et al. 2016),
mainly from central India and the Western Ghats. There have been no published records of Honey
Badgers from the Eastern Ghats of Andhra Pradesh. The current note presents the first record of
the occurrence of Honey Badger from northern Eastern Ghats (NEG) of Andhra
Pradesh State through camera trap images.
This record was obtained as part of a camera trapping
study that is being undertaken currently by the authors to inventorise
the mammal community and its diversity patterns across the NEG of Andhra
Pradesh (Aditya & Ganesh 2017). The
NEG is spread between 18.491–19.181 0N & 79.541–83.233 0E. The region is generally understood as the
section of the Ghats stretching northwards between the Godavari River in Andhra
Pradesh and the Mahanadi River in central Odisha. The NEG has an altitudinal range from 20m at
the Godavari River to 1,690m at the Jindhagada
Peak. The dominant forest type is moist
deciduous, with some patches of semi-evergreen and dry deciduous forest
(Champion & Seth 1968). There are no
published studies on Honey Badgers in the NEG.
Most of the forests in the NEG are administered as a cluster of reserved
forests (RFs), and there is also one large protected area, the Papikonda National Park (Figure 1).
Passive digital infra red
camera traps (Trail Cam and Bushnell 8mp, Scout Guard 20mp) were used in a
stratified sampling framework across different elevation zones and habitat
types across the NEG. Four cameras are
being installed in selected grids, each measuring 5x5 km2 for a
period of seven trapping nights per camera trap (CT). A total of 30 grids representing various
habitat types and elevation zones across the NEG were surveyed through CTs
between October 2018 and February 2019.
Therefore, the total trapping effort was 840 trap nights (=20,160 trap
hours) which recorded one pic of Honey Badger.
The Honey Badger was previously recorded from sign
surveys and community observations from the NEG (Aditya & Ganesh 2018),
however, there were no photographic captures before this report. One CT recorded images of Honey Badger in the
current study. The species was
identified using a standard field identification guide for mammals (Menon &
Daniel 2003). The species was recorded
from a TrailCam IR camera trap located at 17.690 0N
and 81.582 0E in the fairly dense moist deciduous forest at an
elevation of 520m (Image 1). The image
was captured at 00:18:00 on 18 October 2019.
The location was in the East Godavari District of Andhra Pradesh, in the
buffer of the Papikonda National Park. The location was about 15km south of the Sileru River separating Andhra Pradesh and Odisha states.
The CT captures of the Honey Badger confirms its
presence in the NEG landscape (Aditya & Ganesh 2018). This record adds to the biological diversity
and the conservation importance of the NEG in particular and the larger Eastern
Ghats landscape in general (Goswami et al. 2018;
Agarwal et al. 2012; Balaji & Satyanarayana 2016). Their presence in dense moist deciduous
forest indicates their suitability and adaptability to a wide variety of
habitats, and could highlight their preference for this habitat in the
NEG. Given that the Eastern Ghats is
home to several rare and threatened species but is also among the least
protected forest landscapes globally with only 3.53% of its area protected
(Cardillo et al. 2006). This report
underscores the need to implement stronger conservation measures, particularly
in the face of rapid land-cover changes from development activities in the
region such as the upcoming Polavaram Dam (Mohan
2006; Aditya & Ganesh 2018).
For
figure & image - - click here
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