Terrestrial Ecology and Biodiversity

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Focusing on urban and peri-urban landscapes, we work to reduce habitat loss, and strengthen ecosystem services. By studying the interactions between people and ecosystems, we create adaptive strategies to restore habitats, and reduce conflicts in this rapidly changing landscape. Our work integrates stakeholder engagement, advanced field-based technologies and research methods. We work together with stakeholders across disciplines such as local communities, government agencies, and researchers to come up with practical nature based solutions. We design and deploy tools to get quality data and analyses.

Externally Funded Projects

1. Planning for Adaptive Ecological Restoration and Nature-based solutions in peri-urban and rural ware-house sites.

 

This project was about documenting butterfly and bird biodiversity in the Miyawaki forest in Nashik for one whole year.

 

  • Infiltrometer installation – Infiltration Test conducted using mini disk infiltrometer both within & outside the Miyawaki forests to compare the rate of infiltration.
    Key findings    : Macropores in the soil enhance infiltration; However, top soil is unable to retain the infiltrated water, with moisture depleting after a few days of irrigation. Presence of soil microorganisms have been observed in grids with higher moisture retaining capacity; thus highlighting their importance in maintaining the soil structure.

 

  • Moth Survey: A Moth screen was set up inside the forest and in the grassland. A white screen was set up with a mercury vapor lamp and was kept on for 3-4 hours at night.
    Key findings: The observations were noted and photographed to further analyze. We observed more than 20 species of moths in the forest and neighbouring grassland.

 

  • Pan-trap survey – A total of 5 pan traps were placed in the Miyawaki forest and filled with water. The traps were placed overnight and we found around 30 species of invertebrates in the pan traps.
    Key Finding: This helped us in documenting a variety of invertebrates that cannot be documented by regular surveys. These invertebrates were photographed for further identification.

 

  • Earthworm Survey – An Earthworm study was done in the Miyawaki forest using the Quadrat method– this method was be used to assess the diversity of soil organisms like earthworms, millipede, pill millipede, and other small insects, etc., by digging and hand sorting method proposed by Senapati and Sahu (1993). (1x 30 cm quadrate).
    Key findings: A total of 3 species of earthworm belonging to 2 families viz., 2 species from Moniligastridae and 1 from Rhinodrillidae family and Yellow spotted millipede (Harpaphe haydeniana)  found in the respective quadrates.

 

  • Microbial Studies – Bacterial and Fungal community profiling in the Miyawaki forest versus that in the neighbouring grassland was done during the dry and the wet seasons.
    Key Findings: Both bacterial and fungal diversity were higher in the Miyawaki forest compared to that in the grassland. In addition, the bacterial diversity was higher in both the grassland and the forest during the wet season as compared to that in the dry season. The bacterial communities in the forest primarily comprised decomposers, adapted to survive in the sunlight-deprived and oxygen-depleted forest floor. Contrarily the grassland community was dominated by photo-autotrophs with hyperoxia management capabilities. Across seasons, forest soils were consistently dominated by symbiotrophs and saprotroph–symbiotroph guilds, whereas grassland soils showed enrichment for pathotrophs and multi-trophic fungi, highlighting functional diversity shaped by the distinct habitats. The work has led to two manuscripts which are currently under-preparation.

 

  • Nocturnal Survey– 15 species of Herpetofauna were seen in the grassland as well as the neighbouring grassland.
    Key findings: Regular Sightings: Indian House Gecko, Oriental Garden Lizard, and Asian Common Toad observed consistently across surveys.
    Seasonal Sightings: Indian Bullfrog, Burrowing Frog, and Cricket Frog spotted primarily during wetter periods, especially post-monsoon.

 

  • Camera Trap study – Deployment of camera traps helped in non-invasive monitoring of the biodiversity interacting with the fast growing dense Miyawaki forest. Capturing jackals and small Indian civets reveals mammal use of the urban habitat and can further help in understanding the movement patterns.

 

  • Bat studies – To study insectivorous bats in the Miyawaki forest and the surrounding grassland patch, non-invasive acoustic methods using low-cost bat detectors – AudioMoths – were deployed. Based on the species-specific echolocation call signatures, insectivorous bat activity across seasons was studied. A total of six insectivorous bat species belonging to three families (Vespertilionidae: Pipistrellus spp. and Scotophilus sp., Molossidae: Tadarida sp., Emballonuridae: Taphozous sp.) were identified through acoustic methods. These bats were recorded to be actively using the Miyawaki forest patch and surrounding open area across 3 different seasons from July 2024 to March 2025. The Edge-Space bats were recorded to be more consistent and actively foraging in and around the Miyawaki patch as compared to Open-Space bats.
    Key findings: Through visual evidence, the Miyawaki patch was found to be an important roosting space for fruit bats as well as insectivorous bats, especially in the July-Dec season, when it was possibly used by mating pairs. Roosting bat species included two individuals of the Short-nosed Fruit Bat Cynopterus sphinx (family Pteropodidae) and the Egyptian Free-tailed Bat Tadarida aegyptiaca (family Molossidae). Thermal camera scans also indicated the presence of the Indian Flying foxes (Pteropus medius) in the larger landscape.

FUNDED BY – Ignite Life Science

 

PROJECT DURATION – 2024-2025

 

TEAM
Jagdish Krishnaswamy, Kadambari Deshpande, Ravi Jambhekar, Indira Singh, Dilip Naidu, Dawn Emil Sebastian, Kanika Bansal, Gayatri Bakhale, Swarnika Sharma, Ryan Satish, V Vaishnavi, and Pratiksha Kothule, Vivek Hasyagar

 

PUBLICATIONS –

2. Applying a Biodiversity lens for a Sustainable city

 

Urbanization and climate change pose threats to global biodiversity, but some urban areas, like Bengaluru, can serve as refuges for diverse species. While most information on biodiversity loss is from temperate regions, understanding the impact in tropical cities is lacking. It’s crucial to study and raise awareness about how urbanization and climate change affect biodiversity, particularly in the Anthropocene era. Both phenomena force species to adapt, making it essential to identify which species thrive, survive, or face extinction. In Bengaluru, rich biodiversity, including birds and insects, underscores the need for transdisciplinary efforts linking urban ecology, awareness, and conservation with ecosystem services like carbon sequestration and micro-climatic regulation.

 

This project was a collaboration between Indian Institute for Human Settlements and Indian Institute of Science to study the effects of extreme weather events on birds and butterflies found in the city of Bengaluru.

FUNDED BY – Bangalore Sustainability Forum

 

PROJECT DURATION – 2023 to 2024

 

KEY FINDINGS – 1. Peer review publication 2. Art exhibition 3. Butterfly documentation workshop.

 

TEAM
Ravi Jambhekar

 

PUBLICATIONS – https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.70039

Internally Funded Projects

1. Bats in urban environments: study of bat ecology, ecosystem services, and human-bat interfaces

 

Bats in urbanizing spaces are important for their ecological activities such as seed dispersal of urban trees or control of insect pests in agriculture as well as disease vectors such as mosquitoes and flies. Bat foraging activity and associated ecological processes thus translate into ecosystem services for urban green spaces, peri-urban agriculture, and public health. Despite the widespread occurrence and adaptability of bats, urbanization and its rapid expansion can have adverse effects on local bat populations. This can on one hand constrain or limit ecosystem services from bats, and on the other hand, have negative outcomes for bat conservation, as well as increase stress in bats. Many such questions and challenges can be elucidated only through long-term systematic monitoring of bats and their activity, which has been a major gap in India, both in natural landscapes and in urban settings. In this work, we are addressing this gap by developing and standardizing methods for such long-term monitoring of bats and analyses of bat activity in diverse habitat spaces, as part of the Long-Term Urban Ecological Observatory (LTUEO) of IIHS. Methods such as acoustic monitoring, field experiments, visual surveys, and technological innovations (e.g. BatEchoMon for automated species identification and activity measurement of bats from their acoustic recordings) are being used and refined to enable near real-time monitoring of urban bats and analyses for ecosystem services as well as effects of urbanization on bats.

PROJECT DURATION – 2022 – Ongoing

 

KEY FINDINGS – Our work generated one of the first systematic long-term datasets for any taxon from the LTUEO at IIHS Kengeri campus. It is also the first such dataset for bats from all across India. 

  • Till now, four years of seasonal monitoring of insectivorous bats has consistently recorded a total of 11 bat species from six families (3 fruit bat species and 8 insectivorous bat species).
  • From 2022 to 2025, our acoustic monitoring efforts have revealed broadly stable activity of common urban bat species; however, a slight hint of declined bat activity was seen in 2025.
  • “BatEchoMon”, India’s first ever autonomous bat call detection and species identification system for Indian bats, was innovated collaboratively, and four units of the system are installed in the IIHS campus. This is also only the third such system in the world, with much reduced costs compared to its international counterparts.
  • Field experiments with bat guano (droppings) conducted in vegetable gardens and chemical analyses proved bat guano to be a very effective organic fertilizer. The effects of bat guano matched with those of chemical fertilizer for plant growth, with better effects on flowering. 

 

TEAM
Kadambari Deshpande, Vedant, Vivek Hasyagar and Vishnupriya.S

 

PUBLICATIONS