Browsing Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES) by Title
Now showing items 40-59 of 85
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Large Herbivore Dung Decomposition: Effects on Nutrient Cycling in a Tropical Forest of Southern India
Large herbivores can selectively feed on nutrient rich resources, resulting in regular deposition of high quality organic matter in the form of dung. In tropical forests such as in southern India it is estimated that large ... -
Lineage delimitation and diversification in Nyctibatrachus, an endemic frog genus from the Western Ghats
Determining how biodiversity is produced and maintained remains one of the fundamental questions in ecology. The phenomenon of diversification, which occurs via the interplay of speciation and extinction, holds the key ... -
Local Interactions, Spatial Patterns and Ecosystem Stability
Many ecosystems exhibit striking patterns in the spatial distribution of organisms, for example, patterns of clumping and dispersion in semi-arid vegetation, mussel in intertidal beds and even sea-grass and macroalgae. ... -
Mate Choice, Mate Sampling And Baffling Behaviour In The Tree Cricket Oecanthus henryi
(2017-07-12)Among the different sensory modalities that play a role in sexual selection, acoustic communication plays an important one. Acoustic communication has been known to be used for male-male competition (territory maintenance, ... -
Modelling Spatial Patterns of Landsacape Dynamics
(2017-11-23)Landscape is a heterogeneous collection of visibly distinct features of various elements of land and its various forms on the earth surface. Its pattern is subjected to disturbances and undergo rapid alterations in its ... -
Molecular Ecology of the Primitively Eusocial Wasp Ropalidia Marginata : Relatedness, Queen Succession and Population Genetics
(2018-06-08)Altruism is defined as a trait in an individual that increases some other individual’s fitness at the expense of her own. Therefore, existence of such traits in a population is an evolutionary paradox, as natural selection ... -
Multimodal Duetting and Pair Formation in a Paleotropical False Leaf Katydid, Onomarchus uninotatus
The spectacular diversity in the pair-formation strategies among animal groups has attracted the attention of many over the years. The roots of this diversity lie in the diversity of challenges that males and females face ... -
On Trait Evolution in a Heterogeneous Environment: Oviposition Site Selection in a Mosquito in Response to Multiple Risk Factors
A focus in evolutionary biology is to understand the drivers of diversity in animal behavioural traits in the living world. Animals facing similar problems in the environment, such as the problem of how much to invest in ... -
Patterns and Drivers of Multimodal Signalling in Diurnal Geckos
Effective communication in animals comprise emission of a signal by a signaller and a response by a receiver, such that the interaction is beneficial to either only the signaller, or both the signaller and the receiver. ... -
A Phylogenetic Perspective on The Phytogeography of Western Ghats
I used a finer scale data of 156 published plots across the entire latitudinal range of WG, covering most of the protected forests. The pruned phylogeny for this study consisted of 367 species, of which ~ 50% are taxa endemic ... -
Phylogeny And Biogeography Of Hemidactylus Oken, 1817 Geckos Of The Indian Subcontinent
(2013-02-25)Geckos of the genus Hemidactylus Oken, 1817 are one of the most widely distributed and species-rich groups of gekkonids. With approximately 90 species, the genus Hemidactylus accounts for 10% of the total number of species ... -
A place for everything and everything in its place: Spatial organization of wasps on the nests of the primitively eusocial paper wasp Ropalidia marginata
In my thesis, I found that queens and workers in the primitively eusocial paper wasp Ropalidia marginata use space on their nests non-randomly with a majority of individuals showing spatial fidelity to small core areas, ... -
The Prediction Of Field Cricket Phonotaxis In Complex Acoustic Environments
(2010-09-24)Animals detect, recognize and localize relevant objects in noisy, multi-source environments. Female crickets locate potential mates in choruses of simultaneously calling males using acoustic signals, a behaviour termed ... -
Queen Succession in the Primitively Eusocial Wasp Ropalidia Marginata
(2018-01-04)Social insects are the most dominant terrestrial fauna for the last 50 million years. This tremendous ecological success is accompanied by the fact that sociality has evolved multiple times independently and achieved highest ... -
Queens And Their Succerssors : The Story Of Power In The Primitively Eusocial Wasp Ropalidia Marginata
(2009-04-30)Ropalidia marginata is characterized as a primitively eusocial wasp due to the absence of morphological differentiation between the queen and worker castes. Unlike other primitively eusocial wasps, however, the queen in ... -
Resource, Use, Culture And Ecological Change: A Case Study Of The Nilgiri Hills Of Southern India
(Indian Institute of Science, 2005-09-01)Over the last two decades, there have been increasing concerns about environmental degradation and its consequences on the long-term sustainability of socio-economic systems around the world. The publication of the report ... -
Risks of finding mates in the wild: Ecological and Behavioural Determinants of Sex-biased Predation
Sex-biased predation occurs when one sex of a prey species is consumed more than the other, irrespective of their relative availability (sex-ratio). Some of the potential factors leading to sex- biased predation are sex ... -
The Role of Nursery Size and Plant Phenology on the Reproduction of and Relationships within a Fig-fig Wasp Nursery Pollination System
(2018-05-09)Obligate nursery pollination mutualisms such as the fig–fig wasp system, with their central plant–pollinator mutualism associated with non-pollinating satellite wasp species, can function as closed system microcosms ... -
Seed Dispersal In The Tropical Dry Forests Of Mudumalai, Southern India
(2011-06-30)Plants depend on a wide variety of vectors, both biotic and abiotic, to move their seeds to locations away from parent plants. The stages between seed production and seedling establishment in the plant life cycle are under ...