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We often forget lesser-known taxa like invertebrates, which comprise more than 95% of all species. The potential diversity of these less-charismatic taxa in the tropics is very high, and most of these are endemic to very small areas. Therefore, if a relatively small area is logged or disturbed, many species will disappear forever. Hence, every ecosystem, every fragment, small or large, is important for conserving insects.
This song is composed and written by Arjun Trivadi Sundar and based on the essay, "Conserving the less-charismatic: Making conservation inclusive for insect diversity" by Dharma Rajan Priyadarsanan, Anu Radhakrishnan and Seena Narayanan Karimbumkara.
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PROJECT
Bee Diversity in the Rural-Urban Interface of Bengaluru and Scope for Pollinator-Integrated Urban Agriculture, by Dr. Soubadra Devy, Chethana Casiker, Jagadishakumara B, Sunil G M and Chaithra K.
BACKGROUND
Findings from a study on bees in the urban environment was published as a book chapter- “Bee Diversity in the Rural–Urban Interface of Bengaluru and Scope for Pollinator-Integrated Urban Agriculture” in The Urban Book Series: The Rural-Urban Interface: An Interdisciplinary Research Approach to Urbanisation Processes Around the Indian Megacity Bengaluru, Springer Nature 2021. The study was part of an Indo-German collaborative research initiative that was funded by the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India.
SOLUTIONS
Pollination is an important ecosystem service that is crucial for wild plants and crop productivity. Given the alarming rate of urban expansion all over the world, it is critical to ascertain whether pollinators can cope with urbanisation. As bees are one of the most dominant groups of pollinators, the study assessed bee community composition across a gradient of urbanization, starting from Bengaluru city and moving towards the rural peripheries.
OUTCOMES
The study recorded a change in bee community composition between the city and the surrounding zones. Surprisingly, urban sites showed higher bee species richness than adjoining transition and rural sites. The results also indicate that floral resource is a key driver, with the city recording much higher species richness in flowering plants compared to more rural areas. The study highlights the potential that urban landscapes have for supporting bees and sustaining pollination service in the context of urban agriculture.
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PROJECT
Manuscript title: Habitat specificity drives differences in space use patterns of multiple mesocarnivores in an agro-ecosystem, by Anjan Katna, Abhijeet Kulkarni, Dr. Maria Thaker and Dr. Abi Tamim Vanak
This study was a part of the DBT/Wellcome Trust - Bringing "One-health to rabies research in India: integrated animal ecology, movement ecology and human health"
BACKGROUND
In human-dominated savannas, factors influencing animal space use vary unexpectedly, both spatially and temporally, due to anthropogenic activities. Animals living in such landscapes are expected to respond to changes in their environment by altering home-range sizes and habitat selection at multiple scales. We used high-resolution movement data from three mesocarnivore species to determine how home-range size and habitat selection differs across species and seasons in a complex agro-ecosystem in Central India.
KEY STATEMENT
This study highlights the importance of maintaining natural habitats within production landscapes, particularly for habitat specialists. Additionally, our results suggest that agricultural activities may dampen typical seasonal variations in resource availability and distribution as home-ranges of the three species did not vary significantly with the season.
OUTCOMES/ RESULTS
Seasonal home-ranges of golden jackals, jungle cats and Indian foxes varied from 3.1 to 23.7 (mean = 12.3 ± 1.6), 1.01 to 26.48 (mean = 5.9 ± 0.9) and 1.16 to 10.71 (mean = 4.3 ± 0.5) km2, respectively. There was very high site fidelity in seasonal home-ranges for golden jackals, jungle cats and Indian foxes (seasonal overlaps = 0.94 ± 0.01, 0.89 ± 0.02 and 0.81 ± 0.03, respectively).The habitat specialist Indian fox primarily selected for remnant native grasslands and plantations, whereas the generalist golden jackal and jungle cat selected more human-modified land cover types. These are amongst the first reported home-range estimates for jungle cats globally.
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PROJECT
Metagenomics for analyzing the gut microbiome and diet of mosquitofish (Gambusia spp) in India, by Nobin Raja M and Dr. G Ravikanth.
BACKGROUND
Mosquitofish (Gambusia holbrooki and Gambusia affinis) were globally introduced in the early 19th century for mosquito control. Gambusia spp. were first introduced in India from Italy and subsequently introduced all over the country for malarial and dengue control programmes. The adverse impacts of mosquitofish were later recognized, leading to a series of studies worldwide that culminated in the species being listed among the 100 most invasive species globally. The ability of mosquitofish to reproduce at an alarming rate, their voracious feeding habits and their exceptional dispersal capabilities allow them to survive under adverse environmental conditions leading to their invasion success. While mosquitofish is said to have been introduced for mosquito control in India, recent studies suggest otherwise. Understanding how species interact in an ecosystem and their diet is very essential to gain deeper knowledge about these species and to create management plans tailored to them. Mosquitofish, being omnivorous surface feeders, have a broad diet encompassing algae, aquatic invertebrates, insects, fish eggs, amphibian eggs and larval stages. This ability to consume a wide range of diets is possible because of an effective gut microflora that equipped them to become successful invaders.
SOLUTIONS
The traditional method to analyse gut content has been to dissect the food ingested and observe the contents under a microscope. However, this doesn’t capture the diet completely, as the food ingested can degrade quickly and it is tough to identify some of the digested material. Identification of microbes using traditional microbiological methods is time-consuming and most microbes are non–culturable. Metagenomics, a recent method has been an effective approach to decipher the diet and gut microflora of the study organism. The technique assesses the genetic material of the diet and microbial communities.
Using a Nanopore technology-based next-generation sequencer (GridION X5), we have analysed the gut microflora as well as the diet of the mosquitofish. To gain a better understanding of the feeding patterns, we hope to compare localities with different land use and land covers. As a preliminary study, we have carried out a gut content analysis on nine specimens of G. holbrooki from the invasive population in Malavalli Lake, Karnataka. Using a next-generation metagenomic approach to understand the gut content of invasive fishes is in its early stages in India and this study will be one of its kind.
OUTCOMES
Our preliminary results confirm, that mosquitoes are a small or negligible part of the mosquitofish diet. Our study has found that their diet is quite varied and consists of amphibians and other local fishes. It is quite possible that the mosquitofish predateds either larvae or amphibian and fish eggs. Our next step will be to compare landscapes and protected areas to understand how the mosquitofish diet can change based on environmental factors and the threats it poses to those localities. Our study is one of the first studies to use metagenomics for risk assessment of invasive alien fishes and to understand invasion success by analysing the gut microflora.
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PROJECT
Analysing Community Forest Rights recognized in Chhattisgarh State, by Dr. Sharachchandra Lele and Dr.Shruti Mokashi
BACKGROUND
The community forest rights provisions of the Forest Rights Act, 2006 are a transformative tool which can decentralize and democratize forest governance and improve the management of the forests along with the economic and social conditions of the local communities. Though Chhattisgarh is one of the heavily forested states in India, the implementation of community forest rights provision, which gives communities forest use, access, management, and conservation rights, was quite limited till recently. This study was initiated with an effort to understand the nature of rights and titles recognized and areas over which they have been recognized in Chhattisgarh during two different phases (which corresponded with the changing state governments) i.e. first phase from 2008 to 2018 and the second phase from 2019 to present.
SOLUTIONS
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the data for analysis of titles were collected largely over email, web meetings with officials, conversations with civil society groups working on this issue in several districts; this was supplemented by conducting a few field visits in Bastar district after the end of the second wave of the pandemic.
OUTCOMES
Although on paper Chhattisgarh has recognized more than 40,000 community rights under the FRA, analysis of the first phase of titles indicated that titles were only given for access rights (CRs) and other rights to non-forest use (DRs), and not for management rights (CFRR). Moreover, there are numerous duplicate entries in the state’s datasets, and moreover multiple titles for different types of rights (grazing, non-timber forest products, firewood) for actually the same patch of land. This has inflated not only the number of rights recognized but also the area over which it has been recognized. In the second phase, however, the focus has shifted to recognizing CFRRs, which is a major step forward, and by Oct 2021, more than 4,000 CFRRs had been recognized. In many places, grassroots groups have managed to catalyze strong community processes during claim-making. But in many other places, the pressure to recognize rights quickly has translated into line department officials preparing haphazard claims on behalf of villagers, defeating the idea of community awareness building and empowerment through the process of claim-making. Such claims are being recognized without due scrutiny, leading to many lacunae and possible future conflicts among villages. The process of identifying areas and ensuring that overlapping rights are properly addressed also needs to be improved. The state needs to strengthen its village-level capacities for improving and speeding up the process.
IMPACTS
This report has been presented to the Chhattisgarh government and its findings are being used in the report of the recently constituted Working Group on Forest Rights Act of the Chhattisgarh State Planning Commission.
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PROJECT
Jaltol, an open-source QGIS plugin tool for easy water balance estimation, by Anjali Neelakantan, Craig Dsouza and Surabhi Singh, Ganesh Shinde, Veena Srinivasan, Lakshmi Pranuti and Anjana Balakrishnan
BACKGROUND
There is a water crisis in rural India. Half of India has no access to irrigation and groundwater is already overexploited. Policies like Atal Bhujal Yojana and Jal Jeevan Mission are working to manage groundwater sustainably. But they require every gram panchayat to do water accounting—a highly technical task—to be eligible to receive funds. Our review of 25 water security plans has shown the difficulties civil society organisations face in preparing and implementing water security plans. We found that digital tools could help overcome this expertise bottleneck by making water data more accessible. Watch this video to better understand the need for digital tools in rural water security.
SOLUTIONS
QGIS is a free and open-source Geographic Information System (GIS) software application that supports viewing, editing and analysis of geospatial data. In the current version, Jaltol plugin provides data layers such as rainfall, evapotranspiration, soil moisture, surface and groundwater water storage and land use land cover. This tool will provide communities and decision-making institutions with a complete view of the watershed for a particular geographical area, allowing them to make more informed decisions about water management.
The main feature of the Jaltol tool is that it draws data from multiple sources to estimate the water balance for any year over the last two decades. And all these data layers are available on a single platform for easy use!
OUTCOMES
ATREE CSEI's Food Futures Initiative is all set to launch Jaltol—an open-source QGIS plugin tool that makes water balance estimation easy. The name ‘Jaltol’ literally translates to ‘water balance’ with ‘jal’ meaning water and ‘tol’ representing balance. The launch is scheduled for Tuesday, 30 November 2021 on Zoom from 3:00-4:30 pm. To participate in the event, RSVP here.
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Collaborative workshop between ATREE and Karnataka Forest Department (KFD), October 2021 at Community Conservation Center (CCC) of ATREE in Malai Mahadeswara Hills wildlife sanctuary (MM Hills). The workshop goal was to exchange research findings with the forest department. ATREE has been working in the region for more than 20 years and together with the forest department, indigenous people, and their institutions.
Karnataka Forest Department (KFD) team shared the importance of community participation in conservation of the forest and their interventions related to the rehabilitation of one of the villages called Changadi. They also mentioned about invasive species problem with reference to Senna spectabilis, they indicated that it is a major problem and that needs to be addressed currently and proposed a dedicated steering team on controlling Senna.
ATREE faculty and team shared the results of the research work related to the diversity of flora, fauna, value of wild edible plants as food and nutrition, genetic diversity of some important NTFPs, insect diversity and conservation values, enterprise-based conservation with reference to NTFPs, Lantana and agroforestry, importance of decentralised processing units and traditional ecological knowledge and conservation values in Soliga culture.
Second part of the workshop was focused on comangement under that conservation, livelihoods and governance issues were discussed with KFD participation. Under this they identified Human-wildlife conflict, fire, invasive species and habitat loss are the major issues that they need attention. They also mentioned that collaboration with local NGOs and inclusive forest conservation action plan and sustainable NTFPs harvest practices and a site-specific plan would be a great help.
The workshop was also focused on co-management and forest conservation issues. Under the conservation issues they said; Human-wildlife conflict, fire, invasive species, and habitat loss were the main issues that needs to be addressed and they felt that can be addressed with community participation. They mentioned collaboration with local NGOs and an inclusive forest conservation action plan would be necessary. They indicated that the sustainable NTFPs harvest practices and a site-specific plan would be important. NGOs should work closely with the forest department to reduce people’s dependency on the forest and important to give preference to educating a new generation.
“ We have really appreciated ATREE’s effort on outreach and deep research work.“
- DCF and ACF of MMHills Wildlife Sanctuary
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Dr Kamaljit Bawa reviews Patrick Roberts' latest book, " Jungle: How Tropical Forests Shaped the World—and Us". He says, " He reminds Western readers of their obligation to not only reduce their own carbon footprint but also assume greater responsibility for restoring planetary health and creating a more just society." Read more... |
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A new micro snail species was found from deep inside a limestone cave at Mawsmai village in Meghalaya's East Khasi Hills district by ATREE's Nipu Kumar Das, Senior Research Fellow & PhD Candidate and Dr. Aravind Madhyastha, Fellow (Associate Professor), Convenor, Suri Sehgal Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation.
The snails having scientific name 'Georissa mawsmaiensis' are so small in size that an adult measures less than 2 millimetres in length. Read more...
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You could create a huge impact, we look forward to your contribution
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ATREE, Royal Enclave, Sriramapura, Jakkur Post, Bangalore 560 064
Phone: +91-80-23635555 | www.atree.org | info@atree.org
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