Biology subjects

Ghosh-Harihar, M.

Publications and source records attributed to Ghosh-Harihar, M..

5 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

What's next for Indian Ornithology? 101 key research questions

India has a rich history of ornithology, and bird research in this field has expanded considerably in recent decades, spurred by a growing number of birdwatchers and ornithologists. Despite this progress, critical gaps remain. This paper highlights key areas where further research is needed and identifies pressing questions that will shape Indian ornithology in the coming years. Drawing from diverse inputs, we present a curated list of 101 research questions spanning across the various disciplines in ornithology - Natural History, Physiology and Disease Ecology, Behaviour, Population and Community Ecology, Habitat Ecology, Macroecology and Biogeography, Population Genetics and Evolution, Applied/Economic Ornithology and Conservation. The list was compiled through a multi-stage process, starting with a public open call for questions, followed by review and curation by a smaller panel of subject specialists. Each question was independently scored by a panel of experts based on three criteria: generality, novelty, and relevance. To account for variation in scoring styles, scores were normalised using Z-scores. The top 101 research questions were then selected based on these standardised scores. Each question is accompanied by an annotation that describes the significance of the question, and highlights opportunities to address it. While our list of research questions highlights significant research priorities, it is not intended to be exhaustive. Rather, it reflects the perspectives of those involved in its curation, who deemed these questions particularly relevant and impactful towards advancing Indian ornithology. We expect these questions to spark new project ideas among students, researchers, and citizen scientists, while guiding funders, managers, and policymakers toward priority research areas.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2025

Tiger diet in Ranthambore Tiger Reserve: how do metabarcoding and mechanical sorting compare?

Accurately describing large carnivore diets is critical for understanding trophic interactions and identifying targeted conservation strategies. Most studies have relied on traditional dietary analysis based on mechanical sorting and identification of undigested prey remains, a method known to be error-prone and ecologically biased. Here, we compare the diet of tigers using non-invasively collected scats from Ranthambore Tiger Reserve in India, analysed using mechanical sorting and DNA metabarcoding. We found that DNA metabarcoding outperformed mechanical sorting in detecting higher overall prey and rare prey species occurrences, uncovering higher prey diversity. The study revealed that tigers were subsisting mainly on wild prey such as sambar and chital. However, domestic cattle contributed the highest relative prey biomass to their diet. Our findings demonstrate that DNA metabarcoding is an efficient, effective and powerful approach that overcomes several of the previously identified biases of the mechanical sorting approach and provides an accessible and particularly useful tool for carnivore dietary studies based on non-invasive samples. The increased frequency of livestock depredation relative to previous studies highlights the need for active mitigation measures to secure this population.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2024

LONG-TERM ECOLOGICAL MONITORING IN INDIA: A SYNTHESIS

Long-term ecological monitoring (LTEM) is crucial for understanding ecological processes and responses to environmental change, informing management of natural resources, and biodiversity conservation. Systematic LTEM efforts began in India in the mid-1900s, but there is a lack of comprehensive synthesis of LTEM efforts in the country. Here, we use a wide-ranging questionnaire survey of ecologists coupled with a survey of published literature on LTEM efforts in India to synthesise their thematic and geographical spread, and types of data being collected, and identify key challenges to the establishment and maintenance of LTEM projects in the country. Studies monitor 77 unique subjects across 272 LTEM efforts in India. LTEM efforts are more often located in the Western Ghats and Eastern Himalaya, focused on forest vegetation, and monitoring factors such as abundance, distribution, species richness, and biomass. Regions such as North-Eastern, Eastern, Central, and North-Western India, ecosystems such as grasslands, deserts and wetlands, organisms such as macrofungi, amphibians, and reptiles (other than turtles) are underrepresented. Short turnover times of funding and permits were most frequently reported as hurdles in sustaining LTEM efforts. Data from LTEM efforts have been largely used to produce academic outputs such as journal articles, but have also found use for on-the-ground conservation efforts. Overall, this synthesis can help draw attention to the need for systematic long-term ecological monitoring, help efficient utilisation of existing long-term ecological data, identify regions, species and ecosystem components that are underrepresented in Indian LTEM efforts, foster collaborations, and serve as a starting point to address challenges in sustaining LTEM efforts in India.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2023

Spatial patterns in the diet of Gyps vultures in India and their implications for conservation

Dietary analyses are particularly useful for developing conservation programmes for species threatened by resource depletion, poisoning and environmental pollution. Gyps vultures in South Asia represent one such case, having undergone a population collapse caused by feeding on carcasses of cattle treated with the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug diclofenac. Following a ban on the veterinary use of diclofenac, populations of vultures remain low and mostly concentrated near protected areas. Understanding the role of protected areas in the recovery of these critically endangered species requires analyses of spatial variation in their diet. We used faecal metabarcoding to investigate the spatial variation in the diet of Gyps vultures across four landscapes from sites located inside and outside protected areas. We collected faecal 642 samples, of which 419 yielded adequate molecular data to identify the vulture species and 30 molecular operational taxonomic units corresponding to at least 28 diet species. The diet was dominated by large ungulates and varied across landscapes, protection status and vulture species, with the observed variation largely explained by differential intake of wild and domestic species. Domestic livestock was present in >95% of the samples from central, west and north India, but 77% of the samples had only wild species in south India. This variation was explained by livestock density within 100 km radius of the sampling site. Our results imply that protected areas may not offer a respite from possibility of diclofenac-poisoning across most parts of the country and efforts should continue unabated to remove nephrotoxic drugs from veterinary use.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2019

Metabarcoding for parallel identification of species, sex and diet: an application to the conservation of globally-threatened Gyps vultures

An understanding of the factors affecting the diet composition of critically endangered Gyps vultures in the Indian subcontinent has important applications to the design of effective conservation strategies. After suffering a massive decline (~99%) in numbers caused by veterinary use of the nephrotoxic drug diclofenac, vultures now persist in very low numbers, mostly concentrated within or near National Parks. This spatial association might be attributed to the availability of wild ungulate carcasses free from toxic veterinary drugs. Hence, quantification of vulture diets and the factors affecting them is critical to test this hypothesis. Here, we describe and validate a robust \"field-to-benchtop-to-desktop\" metabarcoding workflow for assessing the species- and sex-specific diet of these obligate scavengers from non-invasively collected faecal samples. Seven metabarcodes targeting mitochondrial and nuclear genes were used to simultaneously determine the vulture species identity, sex and species consumed. The amplicons were sequenced using an Illumina Miseq platform. We included controls and three replicates per sample to establish a series of non-arbitrary thresholds to filter the sequence data and eliminate cross-contamination, PCR/sequencing errors and false positives. Using this strategy enabled identification of species and sex for all samples. Diet species-specific sequences could be identified with high taxonomic resolution for 93% of samples. Out of the seven metabarcodes, just four were sufficient to meet the objectives. From this preliminary analysis, domestic livestock seem to be the most frequently consumed diet item across samples from inside and outside protected habitats. Our method provides a rapid and reliable tool for describing large-scale variation in consumption of domestic versus wild species in the diet of these species, paving the way for a better understanding of the role protected areas play in persistence and recovery of the remaining Gyps vulture populations in the wild.

genetics↗