News

Asmi Jeezera is the runner-up for the poster prize at FS-BIO_2023 held at IISER-TVM.

Vivek Nithyananda from Newcastle University, England had given a talk on 18th Jan 2023. He explained how stress-induced states affect cognitive decision-making in the bumblebees. He also spoke about emotion-like states called affective states in the bumblebees.

Yuval Sapir from Tel-Aviv University, Israel spoke about the evolution of flower color variation on the 19th Jan 2023. He spoke about the flower color dimorphism in Linum pubescens through the differential behaviour of its major pollinator, thereby showing us an example of balancing selection in flowers. He also spoke about the pleiotropic effect on color variation as an adaptation towards climatic factors in Anemone flowers. Lastly, he also shed some light about the continuous flower color variation in the Royal Irises.

Photo courtesy: Sudeep R

People inset (Left to Right): Kavya Mohan, Sudeep R, Amal K Vyas, Dr. Yuval Sapir, Prof. Hema Somanathan, Sajesh Vijayan, Dr. Vivek Nithyananda, Manish Ravi, Siva Subramaniam, Asmi Jezeera, Arya Devi, Sachin Bhaskar, Dr. Baheerathan Murugavel, Aparna Pradeep, Kaustubh Verma

Baheerathan successfully defends his thesis on the 16th of Dec 2022, titled ‘Visual ecology of pteropodid bats of southern India’.  The defense lasted for more than an hour and it was very engaging. He has made his way to the scientific world of bats! Congratulations Bahee, we will remember your passion for bats and may you mentor more bat enthusiasts.

Manish has been awarded the prestigious PMRF for his Ph.D. We are extremely proud of this. All the very best for your endeavours.

Balu joined the lab in 2011 as a Ph.D, completes three postdocs since, and leaves for Newcastle as a research associate. We wish him all the very best.

Sajesh has been awarded the ESEB (European Society for Evolutionary Biology) Travel Award to attend ESEB 2022 in Prague and a Developing Neuroethology Award from the International Society for Neuroethology to attend ICN 2022 in Lisbon. Apart from these, he is also attending  ICE 2022 in Helsinki.

We wish him happy traveling!

Kavya Mohan has received the student research grant from the Animal Behaviour Society for her research on the foraging ranges of tropical bees.

Aditya, Anumit, Asmi, Reshma and Sudeep presented a part of their works during the poster presentation at the FS-BIO symposium, 2022.  Sajesh gives a students talk on the “Shimmering behaviour of Apis dorsata” and bags the “Flash talk award” for the same.

Well presented you guys!

Below are the pics of Aditya, Asmi, Reshma and Sudeep flaunting their posters.

Last one is Sajesh giving his talk.

Picture courtesy: Anumit Saralkar (1-4), Yash Bhale (5).

Sachin Bhaskar, Amal K Vyas, and Manish R have joined the lab in the Monsoon intake of 2021. Welcome you guys!

Aditya Ghosal and Reshma Basak joined the lab as post-docs in August 2020 Aditya is interested in  social spiders and Reshma will explore olfactory behaviour of stingless bees.