Current Research

Broadly, I am interested in animal communication using sound and bioacoustics. The evolution of language is something that never ceases to amaze me. Someday, I hope I can get to explore that through my work with animals. In the past, I have tried my hands at topics ranging from behavioural studies to quantifying diversity and activity patterns and even computational biology. For my PhD, I am interested in using Passive Acoustic Monitoring techniques to derive biodiversity and habitat quality metrics. 

My PhD thesis is titled, "Developing soundscape-based methods for habitat quality and biodiversity monitoring in the tropics." Broadly, I aim to develop alternative methods based on Passive Acoustic Monitoring methods that can be used to get at the habitat quality or biodiversity in a wide range of landscapes across tropical regions like India. The specific objectives of my PhD thesis are outlined below:

Objective 1

For my first objective, I aim to develop soundscape-based methods to estimate habitat quality across an anthropogenic degradation gradient using vegetation derived metrics as a proxy for habitat quality. I will replicate the setup in various landscapes to extract generalizable audio features that can indicate habitat intactness across different habitats and landscapes.

Objective 2

For my second objective, I will look at the coupling of avian community and soundscape audio features. I aim to test if the performance of soundscape-based methods developed at higher sampling rates is better than models at lower sampling rates and species-specific classifiers such as BirdNet in detecting avian biodiversity. I will also try to develop models that can predict the presence of acoustically inactive species by detecting latent audio features, such as habitat acoustic properties that might relate to presence of said acoustically inactive species.

Objective 3

For my third objective, I will identify acoustically active soniferous insect taxa that can be used as bioindicators to determine habitat quality and the impact of anthropogenic activity in diverse landscapes including evergreen forests, deciduous forests, grasslands, and scrublands.