​At an ecological scale, we are examining drivers of distribution, and patterns of diversity, across a range of taxa including amphibians, reptiles, birds and plants in terrestrial habitats, and inter-tidal fauna along the coast. Understanding the factors that drive distributions, including environment, dispersal and evolutionary history, can provide insights into emergent patterns of species richness and diversity. The overall goal of our work is to understand patterns of diversity through disentangling the drivers of distribution.

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The road from distribution to diversity

Gowri Shankar is working on the biogeography and systematics of king cobras in collaboration with Wolfgang Wuster (Bangor University, Wales), Indraneil Das (University of Malaysia, Sarawak), and Rom Whitaker.  Under the supervision of Jacob Hoglund (Uppsala University, Sweden) and Sushil Dutta (North Orissa University), Gowri is  focussing on the phylogeography of king cobras in India for his PhD. and is currently in the process of writing up his papers on species delimitation and biogeography.

In addition to generating primary datasets to examine these questions, we also build models which combine environment, range and evolution.

Projects

  • Addressing the ‘Wallacean Shortfall’ for small vertebrates in the Western Ghats across space and time, 2009-2013, Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF). (S.P. Vijayakumar)
  • Avian Frugivores: Understanding patterns of range and richness in the Western Ghats, 2012-2015, Department of Science and Technology (DST), (Sneha Vijaykumar).
  • Macro-scale patterns in species distribution of the intertidal benthic communities along the mainland coast of India and establishment of an indicator based long-term monitoring protocol, 2011-2013, Ministry of Environment and Forests (MOEF). (Naveen Namboothri).
  • Assessing the status and distribution of endemic and threatened trees of the Western Ghats, 2011-2012, Rufford Foundation UK, (Navendu Page), 
  • Avian Frugivores – understanding determinants  of distribution and diversity in the Western Ghats, 2010-2011, Rufford Foundation UK,  (Sneha Vijaykumar).
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