EDUCATION:
2023 PhD, Conservation Science and Sustainability Studies, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the
Environment (ATREE), Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
2009 MSc, Genomics, Centre for Excellence in Genomic Sciences, School of Biological Sciences,
Madurai Kamaraj University, Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India
2007 BSc, Zoology, Microbiology, Biochemistry, Maharani Laxmi Ammanni College for Women,
Bangalore University, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
Countries: India
States: Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Goa
Cities: Bengaluru, Nashik, Sirsi, Kollam, Tirunelveli
Languages: English, Hindi, Marathi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil
Kadambari Deshpande is interested in studying ecosystem services from bats to people in diverse habitats, from forest-plantation mosaics to peri-urban and urban landscapes. For her Ph.D. at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), she studied the benefits and costs from bats to people in agroforestry landscapes of the Western Ghats.
With over a decade of experience in studying bats, her research interests include bat sensory and foraging ecology, and its applications in understanding habitat use by bats, spatio-temporal dynamics of bat populations, accrual of ecosystem services from bats to people in human-modified landscapes, and human-bat interactions and their implications for One Health. She integrates local ecological knowledge in her research and regularly engages in conservation education and outreach to create scientific awareness, for bat conservation and human well-being. She has also been regularly invited by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) as an expert to contribute to strategic discussions on surveillance, research, and management of zoonotic viral disease outbreaks such as of Nipah Virus.
At IIHS, as part of the Long-Term Urban Ecological Observatory (LTUEO), at the School of Environment and Sustainability, Kadambari designs and executes surveys and monitoring of bat diversity and activity at the IIHS Campus, Kengeri and across other peri-urban and urban locations. Through long-term studies, she plans to assess the utility and applications of bat ecosystem services as nature-based solutions. As part of this, she conducted field experiments with bat guano in the Campus, to quantify its potential as a future nature-based solution to conventional fertilisers. She will also be setting up studies on bat foraging activity and their spatial distribution using real-time acoustic monitoring methods, to quantify and assess insect pest control services by bats in urban ecosystems.