FFI performs genetic analysis of elephant dung samples to determine population

A team member collects Asian elephant dung for genetic analysis. Flora & Fauna International – Cambodia Programme

To better know the clear population of the Asian elephant in Prey Lang, one of the most biodiverse forests in Cambodia, and other two wildlife sanctuaries, a team of researchers at Fauna & Flora International (FFI) are working on dung samples at a genetics lab.

Pablo Sinovas, flagship species manager at FFI Cambodia Programme, said there are 200 samples of Asian elephant dung that have been collected on his team’s field trips from last October to this March.

“We have completed our field trips. What we are doing now is the work at the lab for genetic analysis on the 200 samples of elephant dung that we collected from three wildlife sanctuaries,” he told Khmer Times on Monday.

This will take two or three months to complete and the whole project will be finished before the end of this year, he said.

Chan Phanasak, programme officer at FFI Cambodia Programme added that the team has been extremely busy collecting Asian elephant dung samples from Prey Lang, Chheb and Preah Rokar Wildlife Sanctuaries.

During the dung collecting period, more than 15 field trips were done and now the team is continuing to work in the genetics lab at Royal University of Phnom Penh with technical input from the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland to extract and analyse the DNA from the samples in order to estimate the elephant population and genetic diversity, he said.

The number of the population of the Asian elephant in those research areas will be clear when the research project is totally complete, because the result from the genetic lab is almost 100 percent sure, said Sinovas.

Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary is one of the largest lowland evergreen forests remaining in mainland Southeast Asia and Cambodia’s largest protected area.

According to Conservation International, Prey Lang provides critical refuge to 55 threatened species, including gibbons, Asian elephants and nearly 45 percent of all of Cambodia’s bird species and one-third of the country’s bat species. It is home to 538 plant species and 80 percent of the most endangered indigenous tree species in Cambodia. Khmer Times