Why in news? According to study conducted in Manas National Park, Prey base habitat dictate Asiatic wild dog-tiger coexistence

Highlights:

• Overlapping prey availability or habitat suitability could dictate a positive association between dholes and tigers, facilitating coexistence or cooperative behaviours between the two species of carnivores
• Diurnal activity of the dholes had the highest temporal overlap with leopards and the lowest with clouded leopards.
• Factors such as habitat loss, declining prey availability, persecution, disease, and interspecific competition have contributed to the ongoing fragmentation of its populations.
• According to study, conflict with humans on the periphery of protected areas as the primary threat to dholes, higher habitat utilisation where small-medium prey species such as rodents, hares, and rhesus macaques are found, and a negative relationship between dhole habitat use and other large carnivores.

About Dholes

• It is a wild carnivorous animal and also known as Asian wild dogs  or Indian wild dog
• Native to Central, South, East and Southeast Asia.
• In India, Myanmar, Indochina, Indonesia and China, it prefers forested areas in alpine zones and is occasionally sighted in plains regions.
• It’s IUCN status is Endangered

Conservation

• Protected under Schedule 2 of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972.
• Appendix II in Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES)
• The first dhole conservation breeding centre at the Indira Gandhi Zoological Park (IGZP) in Visakhapatnam.

Distribution in India

• It occurs in most of India south of the Ganges, particularly in the Central Indian Highlands and the Western and Eastern Ghats.
• Present in Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya and West Bengal and in the Indo-Gangetic Plain’s Terai region.
• Dhole populations in the Himalayas and northwest India are fragmented.

Note

• Sympatric refers to animals, plant species, and populations within the same or overlapping geographical areas.