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How a Portable Microscope Is Helping Study Diseases in Wildlife and Livestock in the High Himalayas

By  Munib Khanyari August 24 2020, 9:50 AM
Livestock herding serves the dual purpose of livelihood and companionship in the high Himalayas [Photo Credit: Munib Khanyari]

Leaving the laboratory behind

Over one-third of the land area of the globe is grazed by livestock. An increasing portion (1.4 percent per year, totaling 752 million in 2012) of the world's poor (people living on less than $2, or around Rs. 150 each day) are rearing livestock. A large portion of the global food economy depends on livestock products. Not only does this drive people and their livestock closer to wildlife, but consequently increases potential for disease transmission between livestock and wildlife. This impacts both agricultural livelihoods and wildlife conservation.

While these facts were the inspiration my mind was far from them, as I and Tanzin Thuktan aka Dhamal took cover under the rocky overhang. The blizzard had started, the temperature was well below freezing; all this in the summer that is July. Nothing is quite predictable in the trans-Himalayan region of Spiti, a land seemingly beyond both the clouds and the imagination. We were on the trail of the Blue Sheep, the prized food for the elusive and rare Snow Leopard.

For the past three years now, I have been working across various sites within Spiti to understand a rather understudied topic in the high Himalayas: disease transmission between livestock and wildlife. Understanding transmission between the two can inform evidence-based interventions that can minimise disease risk in livestock and consequently spillover to wildlife.

Healthy livestock means increased livelihood security of herders, and healthy wildlife means the equilibrium of the high Himalayan ecosystem, which is so vital in shaping the region's climate and being the source of various major rivers, is maintained.

However, there is good reason as to why disease remains understudied in the high mountains. Often this requires collection of samples in frigid and extreme weather conditions while walking long transects. These samples then need to be meticulously stored, often in different hazardous reagents before getting transported to laboratories that are generally several hundreds if not thousands of kilometres away to be tested using specialised equipment.

Additionally, it is difficult to obtain permits to transport samples out of the study area and even when obtained the prolonged travel time can significantly degrade them. All of this is a logistical, financial and technological burden.

Studying microscopic organisms in the field

My endeavor would have been a step too far as well, had I not been lucky enough to chance upon the Iolight portable microscope. Studying disease means looking for pathogens or disease causing-organisms that are often microscopic. I study gastro-intestinal nematodes (GINs), or in easier terms, worms in the stomach. To do so, it requires that we track our species of interest, wait for them to defecate, collect the feces and examine it under the microscope to find eggs of different GINs.

If the feces isn't fresh, the eggs either hatch or dry out, thus evading being quantified. How many GINs and of what types there are in our species of interest give us a sense of potential cross-transmission.

Back in Spiti, the blizzard finally, subsides… Dhamal and my eye-lashes are frozen and small icicles are formed on our beards. We spot a herd of Blue Sheep. Concealing ourselves behind the ridge, we wait for them to defecate. Once they do and move away, we get onto the scene and set-up our “field laboratory”. The Iolight microscope is about the size of a large wallet.

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This story was originally published on Gadgets 360, an NDTV venture.