The Thing About Wildlife

The Thing About Wildlife

By IshikaScienceNature
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The Thing About Wildlife episodes

  • #06 The Thing about Spiders with Vena Kapoor

    Vena Kapoor works with the Education and Public Engagement Programme at Nature Conservation Foundation in Bengaluru. She is interested in ecology, nature education research and outreach, looking for and documenting spiders and other 6 and 8 legged creatures. 

    Twitter: @venadavenu



    Popular Writing:

    • Spiders: the weavers and stalkers among us
    • Nature Underfoot: Wild Flora and Fauna on City Pavements and Waysides
    • Life on the Vertical: Exploring Nature on City Walls
    • Vena's 6 favourite species of spiders from the Western Ghats
    • Off to see spiders! - a children's book

      • Journal Articles:

      • Restoring Rainforest Fragments: Survival of mixed-native species seedlings under contrasting site conditions
      • An assessment of spider sampling methods in tropical rainforest fragments of the Anamalai Hills
      • Effects of rainforest fragmentation and shade-coffee plantations on spider communities

        • Shownotes:

        • Institutions: Centre for Indian Knowledge Systems, Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF) and their rainforest restoration project, Bird Count India, Cafe Oikos, MPhil in Conservation Leadership at Cambridge-UK, Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI) 
        • People: Harini Nagendra, Seema Mundoli and Renee Borges
        • Wildlife: Jatropha (plant), Aphid (insect), Lynx spider (spider), Indian Beech or Pongamia (tree)
        • GISS in bird-watching parlance is what can only be described as the "vibe" of a species of bird
          • 1 hr 28 min
        • #05 The Thing About Monkeys with Dr. Narayan Sharma

          Dr. Narayan Sharma studies community and behavioural ecology, and the conservation biology of the primates in the fragmented landscape of the Upper Brahmaputra Valley of northeastern India. He is also interested in political, human and landscape ecology, and ecological history. More recently, he has also been deeply involved in teaching environmental biology and wildlife sciences at Cotton College, Guwahati, where he is an Assistant Professor.


          Twitter: @assamensis7 


          Popular Writing:

          • Spotting a Mighty Troop of Stump-tailed Macaques 
          • The singing farmers of the forest  
          • Pig-tailed Macaque: Elusive Monkey of the Deep Forest  


            • Journal Articles:

            • Size matters! The largest wild stump-tailed macaque Macaca arctoides troop ever reported, located in the Hollongapar Gibbon Sanctuary, northeastern India 
            • Chronic extraction of forest resources is threatening a unique wildlife habitat of the Upper Brahmaputra Valley, northeastern India  
            • Socio-economic Drivers of Forest Cover Change in Assam: A Historical Perspective  


              • Show notes:

              • Department of Environment Biology and Wildlife Science, Cotton University, Guwahati 
              • An interview with Nicholas J. Gotelli 
              • After Assam oilfield fire, a central agency sought a review of environmental clearances to Oil India 


                • 1 hr 30 min
              • #04 The Thing About Invasives with Dr. Nitya Prakash Mohanty

                Nitya Prakash Mohanty is a herpetologist who has spent the last decade studying frogs and lizards, asking interesting questions about their patterns of invasion and sleep! He began his foray into wildlife with a master’s from the Wildlife Institute of India, wherein he studied spotted deer and frogs in the Andaman Islands. After a PhD and a postdoc in South Africa, Nitya is currently doing more post-doctoral research at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore.

                Twitter: @NityaPM 

                Popular Media:

                • Mind the tadpoles: No survival of native larval frogs in the presence of invasive Indian bullfrog tadpoles 
                • Indian bullfrogs take to invasive behaviour early in Andamans  
                • Sleep Ecology of Reptiles (video)  

                  • Journal Articles:

                  • Non-native populations and global invasion potential of the Indian bullfrog Hoplobatrachus tigerinus: a synthesis for risk-analysis 
                  • Shrinking before our isles: the rapid expression of insular dwarfism in two invasive populations of guttural toad (Sclerophrys gutturalis)  
                  • Watch out where you sleep: Nocturnal sleeping behaviour of Bay Island lizards  
                  • Impact of invasive spotted deer (Axis axis) on tropical island lizard communities in the Andaman archipelago 

                    • Shownotes:

                    • Nandankanan Zoological Park  
                    • Postgraduate Programme in Wildlife Science, Wildlife Institute of India  
                    • Andaman and Nicobar Environment Team  
                    • NITI Aayog's megacity plan for Little Andaman alarms conservationists 
                      • 1 hr 20 min
                    • #03 The Thing about Otters with Nisarg Prakash

                      Nisarg Prakash is an engineer turned wildlife biologist. His primary interest is to conserve otters and their habitats. His work spans studying otters, or working with fishermen to understand the river better, and also their relationship with these animals. Nisarg works across several riverine systems, particularly the Kaveri river in Karnataka. He believes life along a river is infinitely more rewarding than life in the city!

                      Twitter: @ocap_mycap 


                      Popular Writing:

                      • Living Waters: The Resistance and Resilience of the Cauvery 
                      • The Otter River – Kaveri 
                      • Solastalgia Along the Sharavathy: A Quest for Peace in a Conversation With a River 
                      • No Sense Of Place: To Learn the Meaning of Life From a Four-Legged Therapist 
                      • The Dog Who Knew Sadness  
                      • How to Be an Otter

                        • Journal Articles:

                        • Conservation of the Asian Small-Clawed Otter (Aonyx Cinereus) in Human-Modified Landscapes, Western Ghats, India 
                        • First Record of Eurasian Otter Lutra lutra in the Anamalai Hills, Southern Western Ghats, India

                          • Shownotes:

                          • MSc Wildlife Program Gains New Partners 
                          • Do trees make rivers flow? 
                            • 58 min
                          • #02 The Thing About Inclusive Ecology with Dr. Krishnapriya Tamma

                            Priya is an ecologist, with an interest in tropical forest diversity, dynamics and biogeography. She did her PhD on the biogeography and macroecology of small mammals in the Indian subcontinent. Her postdoctoral work was on African tropical forest-savanna dynamics. As part of her long-term research, she is interested in understanding forest recovery in northeast India and how human activities influence recovery. Besides research, Priya has been involved with organizing the Student Conference on Conservation Biology in Bangalore, and actively engaged with improving inclusivity in our field.


                            Twitter: @priya_tamma 


                            Popular Writing:

                            1. Personal Blog: Pangolin prophecies 
                            2. Shifting Our Gaze – Towards a Just, Inclusive Approach to Research in the Field


                              3. Journal Articles:

                              1. Climatic and geographic barriers drive distributional patterns of bird phenotypes within peninsular India  
                              2. Past influences present: Mammalian species from different biogeographic pools sort environmentally in the Indian subcontinent
                              3. Past climate and species ecology drive nested species richness patterns along an east-west axis in the Himalaya


                                4. Shownotes:

                                1. Intermediate disturbance hypothesis
                                2. Student Conference on Conservation Biology, Bangalore
                                3. Policy on Sexual Harassment at Azim Premji University
                                  4. 1 hr 17 min
                                4. #02 The Thing about Biogeography with Krishnapriya Tamma

                                  Krishnapriya Tamma is a faculty member at the School of Arts and Sciences, Azim Premji University in Bangalore. Join us for a fascinating discussion on the doings of science: what motives scientists? how can we improve field safety? in what ways is eaching ecology challenging?


                                  Shownotes:

                                  • Priya's blog: Pangolin Prophesies
                                  • Twitter bio: @priya_tamma
                                  • Priya's scientific publications and Faculty page
                                  • The intermediate disturbance hypothesis in ecology
                                  • SCCS Bangalore and their pre-conference module
                                  • POSH rules at institutions (superceded by the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013)
                                  • A modified version of Priya's document for field safety and guidelines to mitigate sexual harrassment: pages 11 to 15 in this application form
                                  • Senegalia (Acacia) concinna or "Shikakai": a spiny climbing shrub whose organs are dried and ground up into a powder used a shampoo
                                    • 1 hr 17 min
                                  • #01 The Thing about Elephants with Dr. Nishant Srinivasaiah

                                    Nishant is a behavioural ecologist who studies Asian elephants in a human-dominated landscape. He has completed his doctoral work from the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore under Prof. Anindya ‘Rana’ Sinha . He is fascinated by the behavioural plasticity of large mammals in their changing environments.


                                    Popular Writing:

                                    1. Globetrotters of the Asian Elephant Society
                                    2. This is Híristor’s story
                                    3. Elephants form unusual all-male groups to survive human landscapes


                                      4.  Journal Articles:

                                      1. The Elephant in the City: The Trialectics of Space in the Rurban Elephants of Southern India
                                      2. Usual Populations, Unusual Individuals: Insights into the Behavior and Management of Asian Elephants in Fragmented Landscapes
                                      3. All-Male Groups in Asian Elephants: A Novel, Adaptive Social Strategy in Increasingly Anthropogenic Landscapes of Southern India


                                        4. Show notes:

                                        1. Dr. Anindya 'Rana' Sinha
                                        2. What is it like to be a bat? An Essay by Thomas Negal
                                        3. Governing the Commons: A Book by Eleanor Ostrom
                                        4. Ecology Proposes, Behaviour Disposes
                                        5. Postgraduate Programme in Wildlife Biology & Conservation
                                          6. 1 hr 45 min
                                        7. #01 The Thing about Monkeys with Narayan Sharma

                                          Narayan Sharma is a professor at Cotton's College Guwahati where he teaches ecology and conservation. He is also a primatologist, with a deep connection to the monkeys of North East India and the forestst they call home.

                                          Join for an inspriting conversation with Narayan da, his life's journey, how he approaches teaching and learning, and what keeps him going!

                                          Links to tid-bits mentioned on the show:

                                          Watering holes: The use of arboreal sources of drinking water by Old World monkeys and apes

                                          1 hr 30 min

                                        About The Thing About Wildlife

                                        From the publisher's feed

                                        The Thing About Wildlife offers long and insightful conversations with Indians working closest to nature: researchers, educators and conservationists.