Summary: 

Astrobatrachus kurichiyana, the new frog species discovered in the Western Ghats. Photo : S.P.Vijaykumar

An international team of scientists has identified a new species of frog in the Western Ghats, once again highlighting the rich biodiversity of the region.

Image credit: Deepak Veerappan

Deepak. V (a postdoc) and Praveen Karanth show that fan-throated lizards consist of at least 15 species, with much of the diversification dating back to 8–5 million years and possibly caused by climatic shifts in India in that period. This is one of the few studies that establishes a link between climate change and adaptation in the Indian subcontinent. The study also highlights the importance of the dry zone as centers of biodiversity.

A recent paper from the lab of Dr Maria Thaker, with her student Amod Zambre, has received wide media coverage.

Its raining bush frogs in the Western Ghats
Kartik Shanker and SP Vijayakumar

Should you find yourself wandering in the cloud-drenched mountains of the Western Ghats, you would be engulfed by a cacophony of frog calls. Many of these will be bush frogs, a group of miniature frogs distributed throughout south and southeast Asia. Some are so small that they can be accommodated on your thumbnail!

Hanuman langurs are a species complex

A recently published research work of Manjari Jain, a former PhD student of Prof. Rohini Balakrishnan and now a faculty at IISER Mohali, has been covered in Indiabioscience. A quote from the article:

Male crickets court their females through song. But in the wild, several species of crickets call together in a cacophonic chorus. Researchers from the Indian Institute of Science used a series of experiments that combined rigorous fieldwork and elaborate modeling to find out how the male’s song reaches its mate through the apparent din.

The research work of Joyshree Chanam, a PhD student working with Prof. Renee M Borges, on ant-plant interactions has been covered by the New Scientist magazine.

Sandhya Sekar writes in Nature India blog about a recent research work of PhD student Karpagam Challaiah.

Karpagam Challaiah is working with Prof. Raman Sukumar on the ecology and evolution of asian elephants. The above article in Nature India blog, titled " A tusk-less future for the Asian elephant " is about Karpagam's recently published paper in Animal Behavior.

Congratulations, Karpagam!