Browsing Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES) by Title
Now showing items 50-69 of 89
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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 allocation patterns and strategies in the mutualism between figs and fig wasps
Mutualism involves exchange of services and rewards between the partners, resulting in a net benefit to all those involved. In many mutualisms, hosts are larger partners that interact with several individuals of smaller ... -
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 ... -
Sensory Ecology Of Acoustic Communication In The Tropical Bushcricket Genus Mecopoda : Mechanisms And Evolution Of Synchrony
(2009-07-10)In this thesis, I characterise five species of the bushcricket genus Mecopoda with respect to their acoustic signals and morphology and investigate the phenomenon of acoustic synchrony in one of these five species: Mecopoda ... -
Sexual Selection On Elephant Tusks
(2017-06-12)Darwin was troubled by elaborate male traits observed in many species that are seemingly maladaptive for survival, the peacock’s tail being the most iconic of all. He wrote "The sight of a feather in a peacock’s tail, ... -
Social Organisation And Cooperation In Genetically Mixed Colonies Of The Primitively Eusocial Wasp, Ropalidia Marginata
(Indian Institute of Science, 2005-08-05)Altruism in its extreme form is seen in social insects where most individuals give up their own reproduction and work to rear the offspring of their queen. The origin and evolution of such sterile worker castes remains a ... -
Soil microorganisms and biogeochemical cycles in a grazing ecosystem: interactions between producers, consumers, and decomposers
Microorganisms are the unseen majority that determines ecosystem processes, they perform biogeochemical functions that translate into essential services, and regulate global climate. In grazing ecosystems, which represent ... -
Spatial and Coevolutionary Dynamics of Cooperation
Cooperation is ubiquitous across taxa in the animal kingdom. For example, microbes cooperate in producing antibiotic-resistant biofilms, mammals and birds collectively mob predators, and humans cooperate in utilization of ... -
Spatial and temporal patterns of vegetation- climate interactions
In this thesis, I tried to understand the patterns and processes of vegetation trends at different spatial scales and resolution. The spatial variability in vegetation trends was related to inter and intra-annual changes ...