The campus of the Indian Institute of Science is located on 170 hectares of land, and within it resides a wonderful diversity of flora and fauna. Early morning walks around campus can surprise even the seasoned explorer of the campus. With up to 140 species of birds, who knows what you might see!

For a list of birds sighted on campus: Click here to download

Ants of IISc

Ants are one of the most interesting and diverse group of insects. All known species of ants are eusocial. The branch of science which deals with the study of ants is called as "Myrmecology".

Currently, there are about 12,571 extant ant species as per the information given in antbase.org as on 26/8/09. As per the recent classification, all ants are grouped into 21 subfamilies (Bolton, 2003). Recently one more subfamily is added to the family formicidae under the name Martialinae (Rabeling etal. 2008). All of these fall into a single family, the formicidae. The family Formicidae is included in the Superfamily Vespoidea of the order Hymenoptera, which is placed in the class Insecta. The largest subfamily is Myrmicinae with 138 genera, followed by Formicinae having 39 genera and Ponerinae having 25 genera.

As per Bolton (1995), the Oriental region is rich with 101 genera, 13 subfamilies, out of which 5 are endemic to our region. It is interesting to see that in India, we have roughly 631 species classified under 82 genera from 13 subfamilies.

A preliminary study shows that the Indian Institute of Science Campus is a rich store of diverse ants (Rastogi et.al.,1997). They have reported 70 species of ants from the Indian Institute of Science Campus, from 32 genera and 6 subfamilies. Later, some more species were added to their list and Varghese (2003, 2004) provide a revised list of ants of the Indian Institute of Science Campus. Come see the ants preserved in the Insect Museum, Centre for Ecological Sciences! READ MORE

Flowering Plants of IISc

The IISc campus spans over 400 acres of land in the middle of the busy city Bangalore. Our campus has rich collection of plants: 112 species of trees belonging to 32 families, 225 species of nonwoody plants belonging to 52 families and 45 species of grasses. This campus is one of the rich species centers of Bangalore, others are Cubbon park (approximately 300 sp.) and Lal Bagh. Although many of the trees on campus are exotics, we pride ourselves on our native (originating from India) trees: about 22 species are of Indian origin, for example Indian Laburnum (Cassia fistula) dangling yellow flowers, and Ashoka (Saraca asoka) with scarlet red flowers. We still have remnants of natural vegetation i.e. tropical thorn scrub of Deccan plateau, having thorny Acacias, Ziziphus and grasses like Aristida (broom grass). Few of the particularly species rich areas in the campus are the Jubilee garden (Acacia plantation), CES mini forest (45 species from Western Ghats) and the Swamp near the swimming pool. Several of our main avenues are named after dominant trees in the campus, such as Gulmohar marg (having Gulmohar trees), Tala marg (having Peltophorum trees), Silver oak marg and Mahogany marg.
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Snake rescue at IISc

Snakes – feared, revered and reviled, these beautiful animals are perhaps the most misunderstood creatures on this planet. Our campus is no exception. In the past, snakes on campus were dealt with by the simple method of killing them. This is unfortunate for both the snakes and us, for humans can benefit greatly from the presence of these rodent controllers.

Some students and researchers felt that the killing of snakes on campus, most of which are non-venomous, was both needless and harmful to the local ecology. So we formed a volunteer group whose principal aim has been to prevent such killing by rescue and relocation of snakes.

All the same we believe the greatest protection we can offer these animals is through education. So, browse on to learn more with us. READ MORE