 Reference Base  Past and future breeding of the Indian rhinoceros in capt... |
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| Location: |
Captive |
| Subject: |
Genetics |
| Species: |
Indian Rhino |
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Captive population Rhinoceros unicornis. The important question about the extent of the natural genetic variability in R. unicornis is so far unanswered. Both major populations in the wild (Nepal and Assam) went through bottlenecks; the population in Assam was reduced to 10-30 individuals before hunting was banned in 1908. The population in Nepal was reduced to 60-80 individuals in the early 1960s. So far, only two studies have been undertaken to analyze the genetic diversity of R. unicornis. Merenlender et al. (1989) found no differentiation between three zoo-born individuals (## 85, 1 1 1, 116), all of them descended from founders caught in Assam. Dinerstein and McCracken (1990) reported on high levels of genetic variation among individuals sampled in Royal Chitwan National Park.
The severe bottleneck reported in the Assam population could have caused a high degree of homozygosity with the consequent loss of deleterious alleles, similar to that found in the northern elephant seal and the cheetah. Since almost all zoo-born R. unicornis descend from the Assam population, we could then expect that there are no, or only very few, deleterious alleles left in the captive population. This might explain the absence of observed inbreeding depression within the captive population.
It would be interesting to analyze the genetic variability of the captive R. unicornis population and to compare it with those of wild populations in Kaziranga National Park and Royal Chitwan National Park. The results of such a study would be very important for future captive-breeding strategies.
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