In this thesis, the biogeography of the centipede family Scolopendridae of the Western Ghats (WG)was studied. First, a novel limited sampling approach to identify putative Gondwanan origin wherein sampling of was confined ...

Research leading to this thesis aims to assess the policy relevant mitigation potential of Indian forests as well as aims to assess the impact of climate change on carbon stocks, vegetation boundary shifts, Net Primary ...

Species that become naturalized in a new geographical range, subsequently multiply and spread, and persist to the detriment of resident communities, are known as alien invasive species. Two aspects of species invasion – ...

In societies where all individuals are reproductively totipotent and yet, at a given time only one of them reproduces, it is interesting to examine the factor(s) that may influence and predict who will be the reproductive. ...

Tropical forests are storehouses of more thanhalf of the world‘s biodiversity and play a key role in global carbon, water and energy cycles. However, as a consequence of rapid anthropogenic climate change, biodiversity and ...

All living organisms require food for growth and survival. Heterotrophs depend on autotrophs such as green plants which can synthesize their own food unlike heterotrophic animals. Among heterotrophs, only humans and some ...

For most of the animals, if not all, finding their way to a particular place is crucial for survival. To address this challenge of way-finding, different animals have evolved with different homing strategies. Social ...

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 ...

The present study provides the first description of the calls of a multi-species ensiferan assemblage in a tropical evergreen forest of the Indian subcontinent. I have identified and described the calls of twenty ensiferan ...

This thesis has looked at the proximate mechanisms by which eusociality is maintained in colonies of the primitively eusocial wasp Ropalidia marginata. Unlike other typical primitively eusocial species, the R, marginata ...