1. Effective management of charismatic large carnivores requires robust monitoring of their population at local, regional and global scales. While enormous progress has been made to estimate carnivore populations at local scales, estimates at regional and global scales remain elusive. In the first systematic effort at a large regional scale, we estimated the population of the elusive snow leopard Panthera uncia over an area of 26,112 km 2 in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh.2. We stratified the entire snow leopard habitat in Himachal Pradesh based on an occupancy survey. Subsequently, we conducted camera trapping surveys at 10 sites distributed proportionately, that is with similar coverage probability across the three strata. We conducted simulations to understand how unidentified captures could affect our model estimate. We also assessed populations of the primary wild ungulate prey of snow leopards -blue sheep Pseudois nayaur and Siberian ibex Capra sibirica.3. Our results yielded a mean estimated density of 0.19 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.12-0.31) snow leopards per 100 km 2 and population size of 51 (95% CI: 34-73) snow leopards in Himachal Pradesh. The density estimates for individual sites ranged from 0.08 to 0.37 snow leopards per 100 km 2 . Simulations showed that unidentified snow leopard captures did not seem to affect the accuracy of our model estimate but could have affected the precision. Wild ungulate prey density ranged from 0.11 to 1.09 per km 2 . Snow leopard density showed a positive linear relationship with prey density (slope = 0.25, SE = 0.08, P = 0.01, R 2 = 0.51).4. Our study shows the earlier opinion-based estimate for Himachal Pradesh to have been significantly positively biased. Using occupancy surveys to stratify large areas in order to design camera trap surveys addresses one of the common spatial sampling biases, that is limited sampling of only prime snow leopardThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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The Nilgiri tahr Nilgiritragus hylocrius is an Endangered species of mountain ungulate endemic to the Western Ghats of India, a biodiversity hotspot. Habitat fragmentation, hunting and a restricted range are the major threats to this species. Although several surveys have assessed the species' status, a population estimate based on a scientifically robust method is needed. We used the doubleobserver method to estimate the population of the Nilgiri tahr in the Anamalai Tiger Reserve, a protected area in the Western Ghats. We walked  km of transects across the Reserve, covering  grassland blocks (i.e. clusters of montane grasslands that were relatively separate from each other). We counted a minimum of  individuals in  groups, and estimated the tahr population in the study area to be  individuals (% CI -) in  groups. The male:female ratio was . and the young:female ratio was .. Comparing our estimate with previous surveys suggests that the Nilgiri tahr population in Anamalai Tiger Reserve is stable. We found the double-observer survey method to be appropriate for population estimation and long-term monitoring of this species, and make recommendations for improved field protocols to facilitate the implementation of the method in the tropical mountains of the Western Ghats. Our findings suggest that the Reserve harbours -% of the global population of the Nilgiri tahr, highlighting the area's importance for the conservation of this species.

The species of Odonata are highly predacious on invertebrates, especially the immature stages, which are generalist predators. The Odonate diversity of protected areas of Gujarat state, India was studied from August, 2014 to July, 2017. Fifteen protected areas of Gujarat were surveyed. A total of 60 species (41 species of Anisoptera and 19 species of Zygoptera) belonging to 40 genera under 8 families and two suborders were recorded. Maximum species (54) were recorded from Purna Wildlife Sanctuary of Dang district followed by Vansda National Park (44 species) of Navsari district. Amongst the protected wetlands, maximum species (47) were recorded from Nalsarovar Bird Sanctuary.

Polymorphism has rarely been reported from dragonflies of the Libellulidae (Odonata: Anisoptera) family. Here, we report female-limited polymorphism in females of five species of the Libellulidae and a gynandromorph male of Brachythemis contaminata from South Asia. We describe the morphological variation between andromorph and heteromorph females, and collate records of andromorph females from various sources. Yearly number of andromorph females of Crocothemis servilia, Urothemis signata and Neurothemis tullia was calculated using records from published literature and unpublished sources, and social media.