Seshadri Ks

Indian Institute of Science | IISC · Centre for Ecological Sciences

Parental care is widespread and has fitness benefits. But caregiving parents incur costs including higher predation, and this may lead to selection for body colours or patterns that help mitigate the risks of caring. The evolution of colouration, including sexual dichromatism, however, can be driven by other factors, such as sexual selection. There...

Acoustic signals in animals serve to convey context-dependent information to receivers. Birds and mammals combine diverse sounds into complex sequences to communicate, but the role of temporal sequencing of signals remains understudied in other taxa. Anuran vocalizations are a prominent feature of their life history, and function in defence of terr...

Forest canopies have been dubbed the last biological frontier and continue to remain underexplored. Vascular epiphytes form a rich assemblage of plants within the forest canopy and apart from sustaining diverse taxa, they also fulfill critical ecological functions. Vascular epiphytes are particularly sensitive to perturbations of microclimate and m...

Parental care is remarkably and widespread among vertebrates because of its clear fitness benefits. Caring however incurs energetic and ecological costs including increasing predation risk. Anurans have diverse forms of parental care, and we test whether the evolution of care is associated with morphology that minimizes predation risk. Specifically...

Acoustic signals in animals serve to convey context-dependent information to receivers. Birds and mammals combine diverse sounds into complex sequences to communicate, but these sequences largely remain understudied in other taxa. Anuran vocalizations are a prominent feature of their life history, and function in defense of territories and to attra...

Rice-paddy agriculture is widely expanding, particularly in Asia. Rice-paddy fields are stagnated with water and insecticides are applied to control pests. Expansion of agriculture and pesticide are known drivers of declining amphibian populations globally. Yet, several amphibians persist in such temporary wetlands. How amphibians persist in this l...

Brown Mongoose Herpestes fuscus is crepuscular in habit and rarely encountered. Information on its natural history and ecology is limited and consequently its conservation requirements are not well understood. We report observations of a Brown Mongoose feeding on a Nilgiri Langur Semnopithecus johnii carcass in the Kalakad Mundanthurai Tiger Reserv...

Parental care has evolved many times in multiple taxa and, by definition, enhances offspring survivorship. Anurans exhibit a diverse array of parental care behaviors, but studies examining their adaptive significance in an evolutionary context are limited. The critically endangered bush frog, Raorchestes chalazodes (Rhacophoridae), only breeds insi...

Microhyla sholigari is an endangered frog described in the year 2000. The original description was based on non-adult types and lacked information on several morphological characters, call structure, genetic material and photographs of the animal in life. The absence of such information posed challenges in field identification of this species. Sinc...

Microhyla sholigari is an endangered frog described in the year 2000. The original description was based on non-adult types and lacked information on several morphological characters, call structure, genetic material and photographs of the animal in life. The absence of such information posed challenges in field identification of this species. Sinc...

In recent times, several new species of amphibians have been described from India. Many of these discoveries are from biodiversity hotspots or from within protected areas. We undertook amphibian surveys in human dominated landscapes outside of protected areas in south western region of India between years 2013-2015. We encountered a new species of...

Call record of M. laterite sp. nov. (WAV)

Call record of M. sholigari. (WAV)

Details of abbreviations used for morphometric measurements. (DOCX)

Un-corrected pairwise genetic distances of Microhyla species used for analysis. Uperodon variegatus is used as an out-group. Genetic distances are in percentage. (DOCX)

List of species and accession numbers used for phylogenetic analysis. List was based on Howlader, Nair (28). (DOCX)

Anurans (frogs and toads) are the first four legged animals to have set foot on land and evolved to communicate vocally. They are able to emit sounds by vibrating vocal chords by pushing air over them and using their vocal sac for amplification. Male frogs advertise their presence to females using these vocalizations or calls. This system is so adv...

India has one of the highest rates of economic and population growth of all the developing nations as well as being a biologically and culturally rich country. Therefore, finding the delicate balance between development and nature conservation is very important. Unfortunately, more attention and resources are currently committed to India's economic...

Amphibians exhibit extraordinarily diverse sets of reproductive strategies among vertebrates. Understanding life history strategies in an evolutionary framework is lacking for many amphibian species in the tropics. Here, we report a novel reproductive mode where adult frogs enter hollow internodes of bamboo via a small opening, deposit direct devel...

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Vast areas of tropical evergreen forests have been selectively logged in the past, and many areas continue to be logged. The impacts of such logging on amphibians are poorly understood. I examined the response of anuran communities to historical selective logging in a wet evergreen forest in south India. Anuran assemblages in unlogged forest were c...

The semi-arid districts of Tirunelveli and Tuticorin in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu consist of numerous wetlands in the form of irrigation tanks, interconnected by an ancient network of canals, and fed by the rivers originating from the Western Ghats. While these irrigation tanks have socio-economic and cultural significance, very littl...

Biodiversity in the canopies remains poorly explored in many parts of the world. Particularly, there exists a large knowledge gap in the tropics on the lesser known fauna inhabiting the canopies such as amphibians. Most canopy research programs require numerous human-hours, often in harsh environments which can pose limita-tions. But technological...

Activities such as bird and wildlife viewing, birdphotography, hiking and nature trails appear benign but an increasing body of evidencesuggests otherwise. While there are severalpositive aspects for visitors and tourists, thereis usually little benefit to the habitat from suchrecreation. Assessing and documenting theimpacts visitors may have on th...

A new species of the shrub frog genus Raorchestes Biju, Souche, Dubois, Dutta and Bossuyt is described as Raorchestes kakachi sp. nov. from Agastyamalai hill region in the southern Western Ghats, India. The small sized Raorchestes (male: 24.7–25.8 mm, n = 3 and female: 24.3–34.1 mm, n = 3) is distinguished from all other known congeners by the foll...

Anurans of Puducherry, a union territory measuring 293 km 2, on the East coast of India are understudied. In this communication, we provide a comprehensive list of anurans encountered in and around wetlands across this union territory. Visual Encounter Surveys during the rainy season in 17 wetlands yielded a total of 14 species belonging to four fa...

The presence of roads in any landscape is known to negatively influence terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Many tourist destinations and religious enclaves in developing countries are inside protected areas (PA). They are well connected by roads and attract thousands of visitors. The effect of such large human congregations inside PA on biodiversi...

A survey of amphibian mortality on roads was carried out in the Sharavathi river basin in the central Western Ghats. Road kills in three different land use areas: agricultural fields, water bodies and forests were recorded for four days along three 100m stretches in each type of area. One-hundred-and-forty-four individuals belonging to two orders,...