Research Interests

I have diverse research interests including human-wildlife interactions, behavioural ecology, evolutionary biology, circadian biology, animal communication, sexual selection, climate change and its effects on species’ phenology and geographic distribution, host-parasite interactions. My research is mainly driven by interesting questions in behavioural ecology rather than restricting to a particular model system or sub-discipline of biology. I strongly believe that questions in behavioural ecology are better tackled using interdisciplinary research, incorporating laboratory experiments, field observations and theoretical methods.

I completed my DBT Ramalingaswami Fellow at Dept. of Biodiversity, Abasaheb Garware College, Pune. My latest research interests include sexual selection and human-animal interactions.

A brief summary of my latest work is as follows:

Natural habitats for animals are shrinking at an increasing rate all across the world and particularly in India due to high human population density, changing land usage, and decline in the forested areas. Animals are increasingly finding themselves near human habitation and human-animal interactions and conflicts have risen as a result. The impact of local human population on animal populations living close to or within rural, semi-urban and urban areas and vice-a-versa has rarely been studied. Shrinking natural habitats and vicinity to human population can change natural behavior and life history of animals in multiple ways. On the other hand, the animals can influence local human population socially, economically through crop loss, property damage, life loss, source of income through ecotourism, or trade of animal derived products.

Indian Peafowl (Pavo cristatus) are native to southeast Asia. There are many villages in India where people and peafowl have co-existed for hundreds of years and have influenced each other in multiple ways (socially, economically, culturally and so on). Under the Indian Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, peacocks now have special protection status that permits collection, storage, and trade of only naturally shed peacock feathers. The law makes killing of peacocks for their feathers or meat and trading them for commercial purposes a punishable offense. This has helped reduce the killing of the birds; however, poaching remains a persistent problem. Numerous reports can be found in local newspapers about deaths of individual or group of peacocks.

The deaths may be due to natural reasons such as predation, water scarcity or they may be due to intentional killing or poisoning by locals for their ornamental feathers and meat or revenge. International Union of Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has listed peacocks as species of "least concern". However, a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report revealed that total peacock populations that existed in India around 1947 had declined by 50% as of 1991. Although peacocks are found mostly in moist and dry deciduous forests, they can adapt well to cultivated areas and close proximity to human habitation. Anecdotal reports suggest that Indian peafowl can themselves cause substantial crop losses in the areas where their population density is high. On the other hand, in some places, such as Morachi Chincholi in Maharashtra, India, the local human population is turing to eco-tourism as an additional or alternative source of income. The trade-off between economic losses due to human-animal conflict and the compensation via alternative earning methods such as eco-tourism has rarely been assessed. Moreover, tourism-related inflation of animal populations might be of great interest to conservation biology as a whole, and provide unique conditions within which to study population/ demographics of the species involved.

Objectives:

1. To study the impact of human vicinity on peacock populations across India in terms of feeding habits, reproductive behaviors, communication and demographics.

2. To study the impact of peacocks on local economies in different localities across India.

I was NSF Post Doctoral Researcher at Univ. of California at Santa Cruz from 2010-2015. For my postdoctoral work, I was exploring the effects of local temperature warming trends (climate change) on a population of side-blotched lizards in California, USA. By monitoring body temperature of lizards in laboratory, I studied their body temperature regulation and temperature preferences. Using laboratory genetic crosses, we demonstrated that temperature preferences in lizard hatchlings are influenced by the temperatures their mothers experienced. Some photos of the field site are available here.

I was also investigating how infection with blood parasites such as Plasmodium (malarial parasite) and Schellackia in a lizard population might affect their ability to regulate body temperature at a desired temperature and their survival and/or fitness. This is the first time the malarial parasite was detected in the side-blotched lizards (Uta stansburiana). The infected lizards do not have malarial "fever"--rather they seem to prefer lower body temperatures compared to non-infected ones. The temperature of the lizards' micro-habitat also seem to influence the host-parasite dynamics. Some of the pictures of Plasmodium mexicanum and Schellackia can be seen here.

For my PhD thesis, I studied the effect of various light regimes on circadian rhythms and life history traits (such as development time, fecundity, life span) using laboratory fruit-fly populations.

You can contact me about my research at dhana4shree(at)gmail(dot)com

Please see below for my CV. Also, check out the "Teaching" page and useful links.

Thank you!

Google Sites

Report abuse