Shola grasslands are a unique habitats of the Western ghats that are under threat from many factors. In a recent collaborative study, scientists explore what are the major threats to this habitat.

Doing our dirty jobs of clearing animal carcass for generations, extraordinary scavenging birds of prey, the vultures, deserve our gratitude and attention. Associated with goddesses in Egyptian mythology and revered hero in Indian mythology as Jatayu who sacrificed himself to save Sita, and once commonly seen; today, most species of vultures face extinction worldwide. Four out of nine species of vulture in India are critically endangered; it is now crucial to understand this often overlooked ecologically important bird.

How many times have you fed moneys by the roadside? Are you changing the behaviour of the monkey or is it manipulating your behaviour for food? New  study from Researchers at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment along with researchers from the National Institute of Advanced Sciences gives reasons to not feed the monkeys.

Some details of the reproductive journey of a fig wasp, to find a suitable tree and lay eggs while simultaneously pollinate it in the process are known. In a recent study, scientists from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, fill in the gaps in our knowledge about this fascinating journey.

The Western Ghats in India and Sri Lanka are well known biodiversity hotspots, with a rich diversity of amphibian species. Both these regions have high density of amphibian endemism, which means that many of the species of amphibians found here are found nowhere else on Earth. Over 85% of amphibian species found in Sri Lanka are endemic, making this island nation have the highest amphibian endemism in Asia.

Rampant sand mining over the decades in India and many parts Asia has led to eroding coastlines and degraded waterways in much of the continent. Christina Larson, a journalist from Kihim, India has looked the severe ecological damage caused by unbridled epidemic of illegal sand mining.

The forest owlet (Heteroglaux blewitti), an owl endemic to the forests of Central India, has been the centre of a century-old debate among ornithologists. Its classification into the particular genera is at the stem of this debate. Now, a new study by researchers, involving genetic analysis of the owl’s genome, may put an end to this debate forever.

Termites are known to be efficient farmers who farm a kind of fungus in their colonies to digest the wood that they feed. Scientists from the Indian institute of Science, Bangalore and École Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Montpellier, Montpellier, France, explore whether the termites prefer a certain species of fungus and if they can identify weed fungi and remove them.