Diatoms — single-celled algae — can be indicators of the health of Karnataka’s rare Myristica swamps

Not more than two decades ago, I played with snails on rainy days and would see them crawling abundantly on plants. My friends and I would collect them in glass bottles, treating them as pets.

It appears that snails have almost vanished from our gardens. Lush green landscapes and trees have dwindled to become a few patches of green separated by tall buildings in between.

Researchers find a greater abundance but an altered epiphyte community in selectively logged forests

Sigur plateau in the Western Ghats may be ideal for a vulture-sanctuary, say researchers. 

^{The four species of newly-discovered tiger moths. Left to right: First row: O. suryamal rekhae,  O. suryamal. Second row: O. zedesi and O. ghatmatha [Image credits: Aparna Kalawate]}

Thus hath the candle sing'd the moth.
O, these deliberate fools! When they do choose,
They have the wisdom by their wit to lose.

^{(a) Shola reedtail (Protosticta sholai) [Image credits: K. A. Subramanian]; (b) blue-legged reedtail (Protosticta cyanofemora) [Image credits: Shantanu Joshi]; (c) Myristica reedtail (Protosticta myristicaensis) [Image credits: Shantanu Joshi]}

^{Eastern Ghat Cricket Frog [Image credits: Prudhvi Raj]}

Researchers discover a visibly different individual of the Eastern Ghats cricket frogs, in the Western Ghats

^{Some cryptic species of frogs in the Western Ghats (Left Top: Indirana semipalamata (Image credits: Saunak Pal), Left-Bottom: Indirana beddomii (Image Credits: Saunak Pal), Right-Top:}

In a recent study, Mr Kamath, now a researcher at Gubbi Labs, Bengaluru, along with Dr Seshadri KS, a researcher at The Madras Crocodile Bank Trust and Centre for Herpetology, Tamil Nadu, has reported the feeding behaviour of Brown mongoose. Though accidental, the study adds knowledge about some previously unknown behavioural aspects of these elusive mongooses. It is published in the Journal of Threatened Taxa.

In a recent study, researchers from Sai Nath University, Ranchi, and Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, set out to quantify the impacts of natural radioactivity on the surrounding environment in the Nilgiris of Tamil Nadu. Their findings have been published in the Journal of Radiation Research and Applied Sciences.