Professor Dhan Bdr Gurung joined the Royal Civil Services of Bhutan in 1989 and joined the Natural Resources Training Institute as a Lecturer in 1992. He continued to serve in the institute and became a faculty member in the College of Natural Resources of the Royal University of Bhutan in 2006. He has MSc in Forestry from Dehradun, India and MSc in Natural Resources Management from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. He completed his PhD from ETH, Zurich, Switzerland. He has served as the Dean of Academic Affairs and the Dean of Research and Industrial Linkages in the college. He also served as the project coordinator in various projects such as the project funded by Danida, Norway and currently by the Swiss National Science Foundation, Switzerland. He is currently serving as a Professor in the Department of Forest Science in the college and has contributed significantly in fish and orchid taxonomy of Bhutan.
Assessing the Fish Diversity of Bhutan using a Combination of Molecular and Morphometric Techniques
DB Gurung, Karma Wangchuk and Ugyen Dorji
Bhutan, which is located in the eastern Himalayas, is part of the 10 global biodiversity hotspots. While the terrestrial flora and fauna have been well studied, aquatic biodiversity remains under surveyed. The first ichthyofaunal diversity of Bhutan was done in 1978 which recorded 41 fish species. The list was reviewed in 1999 without any change in the number. However, the academic rigour to ichthyofaunal study was initiated in 2009. Since then, there is a record of 109 species of fish known to occur in Bhutan. Since the conventional morphometric method is not efficient in fish diversity study for many groups such as nemacheilids and sisorids, this study made attempts to combine the morphometric and molecular methods to assess the fish diversity of Bhutan. While the morphometric method relied on meristic counts, banding patterns, and colours; the molecular method primarily used DNA barcoding targeted to CO1 gene. In few cases, 16S rDNA and 12S rDNA genes were also used in combination with the CO1 gene. Currently, the fish diversity of Bhutan stands at about 125 species. With shifting focus to molecular study, it is projected that the fish diversity of Bhutan will extend beyond the current figure of 125 species.