New methods of genomic analysis are greatly improving our ability to learn about animals and to mitigate threats against them. I provide examples from my research program illustrating the use of genome analysis, DNA capture, metabarcoding, and transcriptomics in a range of studies dealing with endangered animal species. These include, among others, studies of amphibians threatened with invasive chytrid fungus, native Hawaiian birds surviving introduced avian malaria, the role of ship ballast water in spreading invasive pathogens around the world, and the use of next generation sequencing methods to assess genetic structure in salamanders, Hawaiian birds, and island foxes.

Most animals face the challenge of finding a place where they intend to go, technically called homing. Different animal species have evolved diverse physiological, neurological, anatomical and behavioural mechanisms to deal with this challenge. It is therefore of interest to understand the general as well as species-specific mechanisms of such a wide-spread behaviour by which animals, including humans, execute this universal task of homing.
Social insects, which include honey bees, wasps and ants, are an excellent choice for the study of homing behaviour because of their habit of central place foraging. They are also especially fascinating because they execute this complex task in spite of a rather simple nervous system. For my thesis, I have explored the homing abilities and mechanisms of Ropalidia marginata, a eusocial wasp (commonly known as paper wasp) found throughout the peninsular India.
I started my work by documenting their homing abilities by displacing them in increasing distances from their nests in four cardinal directions. I found that when released within about 500 metres, all the released wasps returned to their nest on the day of release. This might be because of their familiarity with the releasing areas, which they might have acquired by foraging there regularly. I also found that some of them returned to their nest even from about 1.5 kilometres. To find out what makes some of the wasps successful from such far distances, and what factors determine their overall homing performance, I next conducted three experiments from which I found that the age and familiarity with the surrounding play a significant role on their homing performance. I then investigated the mechanisms by which foragers acquire familiarity with their foraging grounds. I found that they initially increase the time they spend on foraging per day. But after about 2-3 weeks of foraging, their foraging duration starts decreasing although their foraging success keeps increasing. Besides, they also develop directional fidelity in their foraging paths. These results indicate that the wasps are capable of learning and memorising the features of the landscape and use them for foraging. I suggest that the foraging abilities and mechanisms of R. marginata are a reflection of their evolution in feature-rich tropical habitat.

Video abstract: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yvrv7tAveLE

Join award-winning journalist and Fulbright-Nehru fellow (2013-14) Meera Subramanian for a multimedia presentation exploring the human and global health implications of India’s ravaged environmental landscape. Her narrative nonfiction book, Elemental India: The Natural World at a Time of Crisis and Opportunity, is based on travel across the country, learning about the ordinary people and micro-enterprises determined to guide India into a sustainable future. Publishers’ Weekly gave it a starred review and Kirkus Reviews called it “right thinking and accusatory in all the right places.” Meet an organic farmer who is reviving his land after the onslaught of the Green Revolution; villagers in Rajasthan who are resuscitating a river run dry; cook stove designers questing after a smokeless fire; and biologists bringing vultures back from the brink of extinction. And in Bihar, one of India’s most impoverished states, meet a bold young woman teaching young adolescents the fundamentals of sexual health. By investigating these five environmental crises, framed around the five elements, Subramanian discovers individual stories that renew hope for a nation that has the potential to create a sustainable and prosperous future, for India, the earth, and all her inhabitants.

The focus of this talk will be on the international development of voluntary biodiversity offsets, a conservation instrument that permits developers to pursue their activities if conservation actions are undertaken elsewhere to compensate for the environmental impacts of their projects. Largely undertaken by extractive industries that operate in the global South where no offsetting regulations exist, this tool is currently attracting growing interest from policy makers, private companies, financial institutions and conservation experts. I will explore in what contexts and through what processes this idea has gathered momentum, as well as the disturbing gap between the way it has been framed and its practical implementation. I will conclude with some preliminary comments on the (very early stage of the) development of biodiversity offsets in India, and how this topic could become a fruitful research project in the near future.

According to classical niche theory, species in natural communities coexist because every species is the best competitor in its own niche. Neutral theories of biodiversity, on the other hand, suggest that natural communities are largely open, non-equilibrium assemblages of functionally equivalent species. Here I examine some aspects of the so-called neutral-niche debate, particularly in relation to the nature of stochasticity in neutral theory. The use of stochasticity in neutral theory also embodies a philosophically different approach to theory and > model development whose broader implications are tentatively discussed..

Sexual selection can favour the evolution and maintenance of highly
> elaborate traits in males. In many species, males show multiple
> morphological and behavioural-display traits. Though many studies have
> examined the role of sexual selection in shaping male display traits, they
> are typically done over a short part of the animal’s lifespan, and often in
> captive or semi-natural conditions. Patterns of variation in multiple
> display traits over the lifetime of individuals under natural ecological
> and social contexts are still not well understood. Apart from traits
> related to mate-acquisition, sexual selection can also influence
> behavioural traits involved in other aspects of an animal's ecology. Traits
> related to animal personality form one such set of traits. Research on
> consistent between-individual differences (called repeatability) in various
> behavioural traits related to personality is rapidly expanding. However, we
> know relatively little about patterns in repeatability in traits over a
> lifespan, especially in the wild, and the role of sexual selection
> processes in maintaining repeatability. With the motivation of studying
> sexual selection in the wild, I focus on examining the influence of sexual
> selection on male mating behaviour and personality in male Peninsular Rock
> Agama (*Psammophilus dorsalis*)
> I first describe the natural history of the breeding system of this
> species. By following uniquely tagged individual lizards over their
> lifetime, I describe the breeding phenology and mating system of
> *P.dorsalis*. I then examine variation in multiple behavioural traits of
> breeding males and the influence of social context on these traits. My
> findings show that certain behavioural traits of displaying males are
> correlated with the number of competing males and potential mates present
> in their vicinity. I also examine the relationship between these traits and
> indices of male mating success. To study the role of sexual selection in
> maintaining animal personality, I first quantified repeatability in
> risk-aversion behaviour. There is significant repeatability in both in
> short-term and over the lifespan of males. Finally, I examined the role of
> sexual selection by testing whether risk-responsiveness occurred in a
> behavioural syndrome with male display traits. However, I did not find
> evidence for the existence of a behavioural syndrome (i.e correlation) in
> personality traits measured across the contexts of mating and
> risk-aversion. Through such long-term behavioural monitoring of individual
> lizards, this thesis contributes towards a better understanding of the
> influence of sexual selection on multiple display traits, and on patterns
> in repeatability in display traits and risk-aversion, over the lifetime of
> an individual in the natural context.

I will talk about my experiences in the field, other than my PhD research.
During field work, we are part of a bigger landscape (in my case - the
Biligiri Rangan Hills), and I will try and bring some of the aspects of
that larger perspective, into focus, using mostly images and sound.

Social insects are remarkable for their efficient social organization which
is achieved through a fine balance between cooperation and conflict. The
cooperative social unit, a colony, is put to a crisis when the queen is
lost, which is rescued only after a new queen takes over the colony. My
thesis is focused on the potential reproductive conflicts associated with
queen succession in the primitively social wasp *Ropalidia marginata*, and
proximate behavioural mechanisms contributing towards resolution of this
conflict. We started by characterizing the natural phenomenon and then went
on to experimentally induce conflict to create situations that might lead
to the queen succession in these colonies. We could show that, although
there is a lack of apparent conflict over reproduction, there is underlying
reproductive conflict which can be uncovered by careful experimental
manipulation, and can be resolved by the colony members. This work has
provided valuable insights to understand the maintenance of functional
integrity of the colony organization in this species.

How forests respond to anthropogenic climate change raises challenging questions that are both fundamental and urgent. Vulnerability of forest to changing rainfall patterns and increasing extreme events such as droughts is clear from wide-spread tree mortality. Underlining processes, species-specific vulnerability and changes in forest function are, however, unclear. This thesis begins with addressing some perplexing issues in assessing forest tree growth response vis-à-vis rainfall gradients, both in space and time. It then addresses some fundamental questions as to where do trees source water from, and what is the dynamics of water availability by depth that species actually respond to in terms of growth and survival. It employs a novel method to assess species rooting depth at which trees actually uptake water over two decades and evaluates how belowground “hydrological niches” operate for these long-lived organisms that are trees; assisting their co-existence, but leading to differential fates under extreme drought.