Bharat and Shivani recently added to their published work (click for the spider and Myristica articles).
Bharat’s paper discusses a novel and non-invasive method for accurately estimating group sizes of social spider colonies using X-rays. Exposure to the rays did not lead to significant behavioural changes or reduced survival.
Shivani’s study explores the strategies that permit successful pollination by deceit in a dioecious swamp specialist species. Male trees produce 1000 times more flowers than female plants, and they flower for a longer duration. Pollinators cannot distinguish between the male and female flowers, and this leads to chance visits to female flowers, thus leading to successful pollination.