Tripura is one of the seven states in North East India. It is surrounded by deltaic basins on three sides. The Tropic of Cancer passes through this hilly state. The state has diverse ecosystems that range from freshwater wetlands to grasslands and forests. It is located in the bio-geographic zone and is extremely rich in […]
Turtle Meat Curry – Tripura’s hub for the Illegal Wildlife Trade Read More »
Phenotypic plasticity is the ability of a genotype to produce varied phenotypes depending on the underlying environmental conditions faced during the organism’s development. A population’s inability to rapidly adapt to abrupt and significant variation in environmental conditions, often leads to their extinction. In such scenarios, the ability of an individuals to express different phenotypes, with
What is Phenotypic Plasticity and its role in evolution? Read More »
Image scoring, often called eavesdropping, is the occurrence where by information pertaining to interacting individuals is derived by a separate bystander (Bshary and Grutter, 2006). The information is utilized by the bystander to optimize its behaviour in future interactions with either of the presently interacting individuals (Bshary and Grutter, 2006). Image scoring is commonly observed
The Role of Eavesdropping in the Evolution of Social Animals Read More »
Amongst the most challenging biological enigmas is how avian flight evolved. This can be attributed to the contradicting features of the oldest accepted avian, the Archaeopteryx. Extant birds also possess anextensive diversity with varied flying mechanisms, which further complicates the conundrum. Historically, there has been a strong debate around two hypotheses, namely the Cursorial and
How has flight evolved in birds? Read More »
Biodiversity is recognized to be of global importance, yet species and habitats continue to beunder increasing pressure from human-induced influences. Mineral resources exist in significant biodiversity areas, and conservation priorities (Butt et al. 2013). Therefore, biodiversity is under constant threat from mining. Future changes in mineral supply and demand will probably shift threats towards biodiverse regions
How are the ecological impacts of mining evaluated? Read More »
John Goodrich serves as the Chief Scientist for Panthera. He talks about his experiences with tiger conservation. Having spent 27 years as a wild cat scientist, I have been fortunate to run my fingers through the coarse fur of a 170 kg tiger while wrapping a GPS collar around its neck. Even better luck, I’ve lived
India has doubled her tiger population, but what next? Read More »
As the world searches for solutions to global climate change, tree planting has become increasingly popular, with ambitious reforestation campaigns aiming to plant billions or trillions of trees. These projects often have other environmental goals, too, like regulating water cycles, halting soil erosion and restoring wildlife habitat. They also often have socioeconomic goals, like alleviating
How effective are reforestation projects? Read More »
Mangrove forests are a group of woody halophytic floral communities (Hussain & Badola 2003) having the ability to adapt to the extreme transitional zone. They embody divergent habitats between marine and terrestrial environments. Mangroves form one of the most productive ecosystems in the world and are major carbon sinks. (Ribeiro et al. 2019) These ecosystems
Mangrove Forests- A complex ecosystem supporting unique biodiversity Read More »
In recent decades, human activities have caused severe ecological impacts, such as habitat degradation, soil erosion and loss of biodiversity. While the biodiversity crisis can solely be attributed to anthropogenic causes, human activity also significantly impacts the evolution of non-human animals (Carroll et al., 2007). In fact, anthropogenic activities are the underlying cause of most
Are humans causing the evolution of species? Read More »