Kadambari Deshpande

External Consultant | kvdeshpande at iihs dot ac dot in

EDUCATION:

2009   MSc, Genomics, Centre for Excellence in Genomic Sciences, School of Biological Sciences,
Madurai Kamaraj University, Tamil Nadu
2007   BSc, Zoology, Microbiology, Biochemistry,
Maharani Laxmi Ammanni College for Women – Bengaluru, Bangalore University, Karnataka

Countries: India
States: Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Goa
Cities: Bengaluru, Nashik, Sirsi
Languages: Marathi, English, Hindi

Kadambari 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 PhD at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), she studies 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; and accrual of ecosystem services from bats to people in human-modified landscapes. She also 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.

 

At IIHS Bangalore, as part of the Long-Term Urban Ecological Observatory (LTUEO), at the School of Environment and Sustainability, Kadambari designs and helps execute surveys and monitoring of bat diversity and activity at the Kengeri campus. 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 will be conducting field experiments with bat guano in the IIHS food garden, to quantify its potential as a future Nature-based Solution to conventional fertilizers. She also plans to set up studies on bat foraging activity and their spatial distribution using real-time acoustic monitoring methods, to quantify and assess natural insect pest control by bats in relation to conventional pesticides in agriculture.

Journal Articles

  • Deshpande, K., Vanak, A. T., Devy, M. S., & Krishnaswamy, J. (2022). Forbidden fruits? Ecosystem services from seed dispersal by fruit bats in the context of latent zoonotic risk. Oikos. https://doi.org/10.1111/oik.08359
  • Deshpande, K., Kelkar, N., Krishnaswamy, J., & Sankaran, M. (2021). Stretching the habitat envelope: Insectivorous bat guilds can use rubber plantations, but need understorey vegetation and forest buffers. Frontiers in Conservation Science, 111.  https://doi.org/10.3389/fcosc.2021.751694
  • Dey, S., Choudhary, S. K., Dey, S., Deshpande, K., & Kelkar, N. (2020). Identifying potential causes of fish declines through local ecological knowledge of fishers in the Ganga River, eastern Bihar, India. Fisheries Management and Ecology, 27(2), 140-154.
  • Deshpande, K., & Kelkar, N. (2019). Environmental influences on acoustic divergence in Rhinolophus bats of the Western Ghats-Sri Lanka region. bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/661314
  • Kelkar, N., Dey, S., Deshpande, K., Choudhary, S. K., Dey, S., & Morisaka, T. (2018). Foraging and feeding ecology of Platanista: an integrative review. Mammal Review, 48(3), 194-208.
  • Deshpande, K., Gangal, M., & Kelkar, N. (2016). First record of a bat from the Lakshadweep archipelago, southwestern India. Mammalia, 80(2), 223-225.
  • Deshpande, K., & Kelkar, N. (2015). How do fruit bat seed shadows benefit agroforestry? Insights from local perceptions in Kerala, India. Biotropica, 47(6), 654-659.
  • Deshpande, K., & Kelkar, N. (2015). Acoustic identification of Otomops wroughtoni and other free-tailed bat species (Chiroptera: Molossidae) from India. Acta Chiropterologica, 17(2), 419-428.
  • Soisook, P., Struebig, M. J., Noerfahmy, S., Deshpande, K., Bernard, H., Maryanto, I., Chen, S. F., … & Miguez, R. P. (2015). Description of a new species of the Rhinolophus trifoliatus-group (Chiroptera: Rhinolophidae) from Southeast Asia. Acta Chiropterologica, 17(1), 21-36.

 

Report

  • Deshpande, K. (2012). Assessing diversity and distribution of bats in relation to land-use and anthropogenic threats in the southern Western Ghats, India. Rufford Small Grants for Nature Conservation. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.18924.41601

 

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