bsu8d2@bangor.ac.uk

98.sourish@gmail.com

Belonging to a country that boasts of more than 300 species of snakes, my fascination for snakes began at a young age with the ones found right in the backyard. But with India being the snakebite capital of the world, I realized there is a significant need to find answers on how to save people and snakes without compromising either. I began my journey to making this interest into my life’s work by enrolling myself in the integrated Master of Zoology course at Bangor University. During university, I realized that the field I would like to specialize in is that of herpetology, with a more definitive focus on ophiology. I started a four-year integrated undergraduate course, Zoology with Herpetology (MZOOL), at Bangor University in 2016. 

At university, I completed my third-year thesis titled, “The Phylogenetic and Morphological Analysis of Western Himalayan Pit Viper, Gloydius himalayanus”. I completed this work under the guidance of Dr Anita Malhotra. During the fieldwork, I learnt the skills needed for collecting tissue samples and morphological data for analysis. I also got acquainted with the lab work that entails the extraction and sequencing of genes for phylogenetic analysis. I understood how to use software programs that perform phylogenetic analysis. Our team published this work in 2022, with a new pit viper species described, as a part of the larger BITES initiative (http://bites.bangor.ac.uk/) started by Dr Malhotra. During the fourth-year thesis, I worked on understanding the spatial ecology of Russell’s Vipers in Karnataka under the supervision of Dr Wolfgang Wüster. During this project, I learnt to conduct a radiotelemetry project, collecting spatial data, using statistical packages in RStudio and ArcGIS to analyse spatial data and produce maps reporting these results. I completed my degree with a First-Class qualification in June 2020.

After completing the degree, I headed to West Bengal to work with Society for Nature Conservation, Research and Community Engagement (CONCERN) to work as a Research Lead. We focus primarily on working on snake and snakebite research and community work in East and North-East India. One of the first ideas I worked on here was to find a way to improve and better document the snake rescue and release work that we did in Hooghly district, West Bengal. I developed a form on the data collection software, EpiCollect5, to collect data about the rescue by our rescuers. This is the first time any such data has been collected by a rescue network in India. We plan on publishing this work once a year of data is collected and analysed. I helped in conducting venomous snake rescue training workshops for Forest Department Personnel. I undertook education programs with rural communities to help mitigate snakebites and the dos and don’ts in case of a venomous snakebite. I got a chance to help with working on an early elephant warning detection system that CONCERN has developed in Purulia. We set up laser systems that were triggered when an elephant crossed it to warn the people of the nearest villages and therefore, reduce the loss of life to elephant conflict. In addition to working on such projects, I have also added skills such as herpetofauna husbandry work and handling and working with venomous snakes in rescue situations.

I started my PhD on January 2022 under the supervision of Dr Anita Malhotra and Dr Axel Barlow. It focuses on using novel methods to understand the genetics, taxonomy and ecology of two genera of medically significant snakes of India. My hope is to try and provide more clarity on the snakebite crisis in India through this research utilising novel genetic methodology. 

My PhD research focuses on several aspects of medically significant snakes in India. The first component involves using snake rescue encounters from the Hooghly district, West Bengal, to collect spatial and temporal data on human-snake conflict in the region. A key aspect of understanding snakebites is identifying the overlap between snake and human activities. However, most research relies heavily on venom studies and models based on bite data, while few studies emphasize snake ecology and distribution to assess risk factors. In addition, there is a lack of distributional data and a dearth of information about where exactly snake-human conflicts occur within rural landscapes. Collecting such data has been hindered by the absence of a simple, efficient methodology that can be easily replicated with minimal error. Some studies have developed methods to estimate high-risk areas for snake conflict, though they generally do not incorporate snake distribution data. Recent studies have started to use snake distribution data (such as models derived from occurrence records), but none have utilized real-time snake occurrence data collected directly from the field. Snake rescues present an opportunity to gather this real-time data. Information from these events can provide valuable insights, and for this project, data is being collected by 14 trained rescuers from a local non-profit NGO. The data includes details such as the date and time of rescue, species, location of the rescue (e.g., kitchen, storehouse, rice field, mango orchard, etc.), and GPS coordinates. These data will be analyzed to identify patterns in each medically significant species and offer a data-driven risk assessment of human-snake conflict in the area.

The second aspect of my research investigates the phylogeography of four medically significant genera of venomous snakes in the Indian subcontinent: Naja, Bungarus, Echis, and Daboia. We plan to use low-coverage whole-genome shotgun sequencing to achieve approximately 10X coverage. These will be the first whole-genome sequences for many of the species we intend to study. From this sequencing data, we aim to construct phylogenies for each genus and understand the intraspecific population structures of individual species. This information will serve as a foundation for improving our understanding of venom variability and the clinical data that might differ between populations. This study is funded by the International Science Partnerships Fund (ISPF) Institutional Support Grant awarded to me.

Additionally, we aim to produce a genome assembly for Naja naja from Sri Lanka and compare it with an already published genome from India. I am also exploring whether ventral scale clippings can be used to extract and produce high molecular weight DNA for such genome assemblies. The comparison of these two assemblies will allow us to investigate any structural variations between the genomes. This portion of the study is supported by the NERC Environmental Omics Facility (NEOF) pilot project grant, awarded to my supervisor, Dr. Anita Malhotra.

Finally, we are conducting a study to utilize fecal samples from medically significant snakes to analyze diet diversity through DNA metabarcoding. This research aims to improve our understanding of whether dietary variation contributes to the differences observed in venom profiles between populations of the same species as well as across different species.