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Publications (175)
The nature and outcome of various population interactions in an ecosystem significantly contribute to its stability. Any shift in frequency and abundance of such interactions including the density of the interacting species, can lead to cascading effects that may destabilize an otherwise balanced self-sustaining ecosystem. Inter-species interaction...
Ever since language and script evolved, humans have documented their own lives, their business transactions, the lives of animals and of plants, and the movements of the stars. The earliest recorded diary was kept by Merer, who lived at the time of the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza; Merer writes about the Tura limestone that he loaded o...
An essential adaptive strategy in insects is the evolution of olfactory receptors (ORs) to recognize important volatile environmental chemical cues. Our model species, Ceratosolen fusciceps , a specialist wasp pollinator of Ficus racemosa , likely possesses an OR repertoire that allows it to distinguish fig‐specific volatiles in highly variable env...
Food is a serious business, for humans, for non-human animals, and for plants. Humans are the only animals that have monetised and trade food, although some spiders, crickets, and birds engage in nuptial gifts of food to facilitate mating. In crickets, males offer food produced from special glands to feed females; spider males themselves form the t...
Mutualisms are consumer–resource interactions, in which goods and services are exchanged. Biological market theory states that exchanges should be regulated by both partners. However, most studies on mutualisms are one-sided, focusing on the control exercised by host organisms on their symbionts. In the brood-site pollination mutualism between fig...
In some mutualisms involving plants, photoassimilates are provided as rewards to symbionts. Endophagous organisms often manipulate host plants to increase access to photoassimilates. Host manipulations by endophagous organisms that are also mutualists are generally less understood. We show host plant manipulations by symbionts and the role of phyto...
Mutualisms are consumer–resource interactions, in which goods and services are exchanged. Biological market theory states that exchanges should be regulated by both partners. However, most studies on mutualisms are one-sided, focusing on the control exercised by host organisms on their symbionts. In the brood-site pollination mutualism between fig...
Climate anxiety is as newly recognised a phenomenon as is the neologism solastalgia. The word solastalgia was coined by the Australian environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht; it is a composite of the concepts of solace and desolation, and the pain ('algia') derived from the immediate loss of or assault to one's place of residence (Albrecht 2005)....
Humans communicate aggression through words, gestures, guns, bombs, and missiles. Guns, bombs, and missiles are left out of expressions of affection, unless they are meant to impress a loved one or affirm a beloved ideology. Many organisms other than humans use gestures although they may not have words, and the vast majority of organisms also use t...
The challenges of bee research in Asia are unique and severe, reflecting different cultures, landscapes, and faunas. Strategies and frameworks developed in North America or Europe may not prove applicable. Virtually none of these species have been assessed by the IUCN and there is a paucity of public data on even the basics of bee distribution. If...
The architectural feats of termites and their farming capabilities have been admired by biologists, engineers and architects and have inspired writers including early natural historians. South India is endowed with termite mud castles; their seeming impregnability threw up intellectual challenges, initiating conversations between biologists and eng...
The 1920s mark the rise of robots in the human lexicon. Karel Capek, a Czech playwright, wrote R. U. R., which stands for Rossumovi Univerzalnı Roboti or Rossum's Universal Robots. The word for worker or labourer in Czech is robota; Karel was given the idea for this word by his artist brother Josef, and the word robot for a humanmanufactured humano...
An essential adaptive strategy in insects is the evolution of olfactory receptors (ORs) to recognize important volatile environmental chemical cues. Our model species, Ceratosolen fusciceps, a specialist wasp pollinator of Ficus racemosa , likely possesses an OR repertoire that allows it to distinguish fig-specific volatiles in highly variable envi...
Artificial light at night (ALAN) is leading to light pollution on local and global scales. Reflected and scattered light contributes to skyglow over cities and large industrial complexes. ALAN is one of the key drivers of insect declines in the Anthropocene era. This is the likely consequence of perturbations in circadian clocks by extension and ev...
The world received a confidence booster in the power of the scientific method, having witnessed and participated in the recent development of successful vaccines against SARS-COV-2. The world also got a peek into scientific controversies, the clamour for more transparency and data sharing, besides the requirement for rigorous testing, adequate samp...
The ability to disperse is vital for all organisms, but especially for those whose habitats deteriorate, necessitating relocation to better feeding or breeding sites. Phoresy is assisted dispersal in which one organism uses another as its vehicle. In this review, phoresy will be largely restricted to cases wherein the rider is not parasitic on the...
The Indian rubber fig tree Ficus elastica Roxb. Ex Hornem. Moraceae is the constituent of the iconic living root bridges (LRBs) in Meghalaya, India, and is characterized by a highly specific mutualism between the fig and its pollinating agaonid fig wasp, in which the wasps breed within fig inflorescences. F. elastica is restricted to south and sout...
The ancient interaction between figs (Ficus, Moraceae) and their pollinating fig wasps is an unusual example of a mutualism between plants and gall-inducing insects. This review intends to offer fresh perspectives into the relationship between figs and the diversity of gall-inducing sycophiles which inhabit their enclosed globular inflorescences th...
This article is a brief about the ecological interaction between plant, aphids and ants. The aim of writing a popular science article is to define complex scientific phenomenons in simplistic way that is easily accessible to a larger audience. This will not only facilitate the basic understanding of ecology in high school students and teachers but...
Ficus racemosa with an Indo Australasian distribution has so far been recorded to harbour in its fruits, nematode species of the aphelenchoid genera Schistonchus, Ficophagus and Martininema, and species of diplogastrid genera Teratodiplogaster and Pristionchus. The Indian species reported so far from Ficus racemosa lack comprehensive details on mor...
Hitchhikers (phoretic organisms) need vehicles to disperse out of unsuitable habitats. Therefore, finding vehicles with the right functional attributes is essential for phoretic organisms. To locate these vehicles, phoretic organisms employ cues within modalities, ranging from visual to chemical senses. However, how hitchhikers discriminate between...
Hitchhikers (phoretic organisms) identify their vehicles using species‐specific visual, chemical and vibrational cues. However, what factors influence their choice between vehicles of the same species has rarely been investigated.
Hitchhikers must not only avoid overcrowded vehicles but may also need to travel with conspecifics to ensure mates at t...
Bees exemplify flights under bright sunlight. A few species across bee families have evolved nocturnality, displaying remarkable adaptations to overcome limitations of their daylight-suited apposition eyes. Phase inversion to nocturnality in a minority of bees that co-exist with diurnal bees provides a unique opportunity to study ecological benefit...
Metacommunity membership is influenced by habitat availability and trophic requirements. However, for multitrophic horizontally transmitted symbiont communities that are closely associated with hosts, symbiont–host interactions may affect membership criteria in novel ways. For example, failure of beneficial services from symbionts could influence t...
Floral larceny by bees has been studied mostly in open flowers although it is also experienced in buds. Until now, only few studies have recorded larceny of unopened flowers. In this study, we present behavioural observations of Apis and non-Apis bees exploiting Strobilanthes ixiocephala (Acanthaceae) buds for floral rewards. The bees pierce open t...
Soil is used for the construction of structures by many animals, at times admixed with endogenous secretions. These additives, along with soil components, are suggested to have a role in biocementation. However, the relative contribution of endogenous and exogenous materials to soil strength has not been adequately established. Termite mounds are e...
Mass–energy transfer across the boundaries of living systems is crucial for the maintenance of homeostasis; however, it is scarcely known how structural strength and integrity is maintained in extended phenotypes while also achieving optimum heat–mass exchange. Here we present data on strength, stability, porosity and permeability of termite mounds...
Metacommunity membership is influenced by habitat availability and trophic requirements. However, for multitrophic symbiont communities that are closely associated with host plants, symbionts and hosts may additionally influence each other affecting membership criteria in novel ways. For example, failure of beneficial services from a symbiont could...
Mutualisms are often subject to perturbations by parasitism arising from third‐party interactions. How third‐party perturbations are dampened is a fundamental question pertaining to mutualism stability. Phoretic organisms that turn parasitic within a mutualism may destabilize it. If the fitness cost of such phoresy is high, then density‐dependent e...
Biocemented earthen structures like termite mounds can be ten times stronger than the surrounding soil and can last for decades to centuries. Their architecture harvests wind energy for ventilation in order to achieve highly controlled internal environment and has inspired construction of energy-efficient buildings but little is known about the che...
Communities in which species are obligately associated with a single host are ideal to test adaptive responses of community traits to host-imposed selection because such communities are often highly insulated. Fig species provide oviposition resources to co-evolved fig-wasp communities. Dispersing fig-wasp communities move from one host plant to an...
Communities in which species are obligately associated with a single host plant are ideal to test adaptive responses of community traits to selection since such communities are often highly insulated. Fig species provide oviposition resources to co-evolved fig-wasp communities. Dispersing fig-wasp communities move from one host plant to another for...
Galls are the product of enclosed internal herbivory where the gall maker induces a plant structure within which the herbivores complete their development. For successful sustained herbivory, gall makers must (1) suppress the induction of plant defenses in response to herbivory that is usually mediated through the jasmonic acid pathway and involves...
In a tritrophic system, parasitoid development and galler host survival strategies have rarely been investigated simultaneously, an approach crucial for a complete understanding of the complexity of host–parasitoid interactions. Strategies in parasitoids to maximize host exploitation and in gallers to reduce predation risk can greatly affect the st...
Fungus-farming termites cultivate a mutualistic fungus Termitomyces inside their nest mounds in CO2-rich environments. For sustainable harvests, termites must control weedy parasitic fungi such as Pseudoxylaria that may exploit resources meant for cultivar growth. Earlier, we discovered that termites exploit fungal scents to distinguish between cro...
1. Acceptance of hosts for oviposition is often hardwired in short‐lived insects, but can be dynamic at the individual level due to variation in physiological state determinants such as ageing and prior oviposition. However, the effect of the oviposition history of resources together with time taken to accept less preferred hosts in ageing insects...
The night is a special niche characterized by dim light, lower temperatures, and higher humidity compared to the day. Several animals have made the transition from the day into the night and have acquired unique adaptations to cope with the challenges of performing nocturnal activities. Several plant species have opted to bloom at night, possibly a...
Urban vegetation is an essential requirement in cities for mitigating pollution, heat island effects and providing food and shelter to urban fauna. Efforts to conserve and augment green cover in cities, however, often lack data on the genetic diversity of urban trees, which could be crucial to the success of such programmes. We investigate the popu...
In the fig–fig wasp nursery pollination system, parasitic wasps, such as gallers and parasitoids that oviposit from the exterior into the fig syconium (globular, enclosed inflorescence) are expected to use a variety of chemical cues for successful location of their hidden hosts. Behavioral assays were performed with freshly eclosed naive galler was...
This study investigated for the first time the impact of the internal mound environment of fungus-growing termites on the growth of fungal crop parasites. Mounds of the termite Odontotermes obesus acted as 1) temperature and relative humidity (RH) “stabilisers” showing dampened daily variation, and 2) “extreme environments” exhibiting elevated RH a...
The combined influence of life-history strategy and resource dispersion on dispersal evolution of a biological community, and by extension, on community assemblage, has received sparse attention. Highly specialized fig wasp communities are ideal for addressing this question since the life-history strategies that affect their pace of life and the di...
Mutualistic associations such as the fungal farms of insects are prone to parasitism and are consequently vulnerable to attack by weeds and pests. Therefore, efficient farm management requires quick detection of weeds for their elimination. Furthermore, if the available weedicides are non-specific, then the ability of insects to discriminate betwee...
Characterising the basic building block of termite mound construction
Humboldtia brunonis (Fabaceae), an endemic ant-plant of the Indian Western Ghats dominates the rainforest understory and produces extrafloral nectaries on young expanding leaves and floral bud bracts for its resident ants. Some plants produce a hollow domatium in their stem internodes that provides shelter to 16 ant species. The domatia are also oc...
We examined the morphology of the cauline domatia of the semi-myrmecophyte Humboldtia brunonis at different stages of ontogeny. We observed that the hollow chamber in H. brunonis is spontaneously formed by the plant, and suggest this to be a collective effect of both schizogeny and lysogeny, following acropetal lignification of the pith cells as th...
Background/Question/Methods
Animal constructions such as termite mounds have received scrutiny by architects, structural engineers, soil scientists and behavioural ecologists but their basic building blocks remain uncharacterized and the criteria used for material selection unexplored. By conducting in-situ studies and controlled experiments on te...
Animal constructions such as termite mounds have received scrutiny by architects, structural engineers,
soil scientists and behavioural ecologists but their basic building blocks remain uncharacterized and the
criteria used for material selection unexplored. By conducting controlled experiments on Odontotermes
obesus termites, we characterize the b...
Animal constructions such as termite mounds have received scrutiny by architects, structural engineers, soil scientists and behavioural ecologists but their basic building blocks remain uncharacterized and the criteria used for material selection unexplored. By conducting controlled experiments on Odontotermes obesus termites, we characterize the b...
Symbiosis is a process that can generate evolutionary novelties and can extend the phenotypic niche space of organisms. Symbionts can act together with their hosts to co-construct host organs, within which symbionts are housed. Once established within hosts, symbionts can also influence various aspects of host phenotype, such as resource acquisitio...
Host location in insects is often hard-wired but it can be dynamic at an individual level due to
variation in physiological state determinants. The critical parameter, time of acceptance of low
ranked hosts, has not been recorded by researchers while studying the effect of ageing on
specificity. We performed behavioral assays with naïve wasps and w...
We show that the insect ovipositor is an olfactory organ that responds to volatiles and CO2 in gaseous form. We demonstrate this phenomenon in parasitic wasps associated with Ficus racemosa where ovipositors, as slender as a human hair, drill through the syconium (enclosed inflorescences) and act as a guiding probe to locate highly specific egg-lay...
Sex in symbionts is useful in creating beneficial traits. However, the resultant decrease in genetic relatedness between symbionts can be potentially detrimental for mutualistic interactions such as those between fungus-growing termites and the cultivated fungi in the genus Termitomyces, where the termite host should try to increase intra-nest symb...
Chemical communication is ubiquitous. The identification of conserved structural elements in visual and acoustic communication is well established, but comparable information on chemical communication displays (CCDs) is lacking.
We assessed the phenotypic integration of CCDs in a meta‐analysis to characterize patterns of covariation in CCDs and ide...
Sexual dimorphism in eye structure is attributed to sexual selection in animals that employ vision for locating mates. In many male insects, large eyes and eye regions of higher acuity are believed to facilitate the location of females. Here, we compare various features of male and female eyes in three sympatric carpenter bee species, which include...
Field experiments estimating the reaction of perching male X. tenuiscapa to stones thrown of known sizes.
(XLSX)
Mate location behaviour and associated morphological adaptations reported in male carpenter bees.
(DOCX)
Night,dawn,and dusk have abiotic features that differ from the day. Illumination,wind speeds,turbulence,and temperatures are lower while humidity may be higher at night. Nocturnal pollination occurred in 30% of angiosperm families across 68% of orders,97% of families with C3,two-thirds of fam-ilies with crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM),and 71% di...
Ficus and their mutualistic pollinating wasps provide a unique model to investigate joint
diversification in a high dispersal system. We investigate genetic structuring in an
extremely wide-ranging Ficus species, F. racemosa, and its pollinating wasp
throughout their range, which extends from India to Australia.
Our samples were structured into fou...
Brood-site pollination mutualisms are those in which plants offer sites to pollinators for the development of offspring or mimic the presence of these sites in exchange for pollination services. Floral scent is an important component of pollinator attraction in such mutualisms and is often composed of volatiles that are commonly emitted by plants i...
Presented by Prof. Renee M. Borges at the 53 rd Annual meeting of Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation, Montpellier, France, June 19-23, 2016
The study of animal movement and dispersal has ushered a diverse array of theoretical inquiries and predictions. However, empirical studies to test these predictions on how dispersion of resources drives the evolution of dispersal are few. Such an investigation is particularly challenging when trying to account for both the context of dispersal and...
In nursery pollination mutualisms, which are usually obligate interactions, olfactory attraction of pollinators by floral volatile organic compounds (VOCs) is the main step in guaranteeing partner encounter. However, mechanisms ensuring the evolutionary stability of dioecious fig–pollinator mutualisms, in which female fig trees engage in pollinatio...
The fig-fig wasp system of Ficus racemosa constitutes an assemblage of galler and parasitoid wasps in which tritrophic interactions occur. Since predatory ants (Oecophylla smaragdina and Technomyrmex albipes) or mostly trophobiont-tending ants (Myrmicaria brunnea) were previously shown to differentially use volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from fi...