Shashank Balakrishna

Nottingham Trent University | NTU · School of Animal, Rural and Environmental Sciences

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...

Rapid urbanization is a growing threat to biodiversity, causing wide-scale extirpation of species from their natural habitats. Some species such as rock agamas, Psammophilus dorsalis, seem to be sufficiently tolerant and continue to persist in urban environments. Given that urbanization alters species composition at multiple trophic levels, we expe...

Escape strategies of animals are economic decisions, expected to vary as a function of both intrinsic (e.g., performance ability) and extrinsic factors (e.g., level of threat and microhabitat). Anthropogenic disturbance, especially urbanization, changes a range of environmental factors including habitat characteristics and predation risk. As a cons...

Urbanisation changes the structure of natural habitats and alters trophic interactions, pressuring urban species to adjust and adapt. Unlike behavioural shifts that tend to be more flexible, morphological characteristics in vertebrates are less plastic and changes may come at a greater cost. We explored the hypothesis that morphological characteris...