Squirrel Colloquium 2025 #
The 9th International Squirrel Colloquium will be organised at Tirupati in south India between 6th-11th January 2025. The colloquium will serve as a platform for the diverse global community of squirrel biologists to come together to discuss their research, network, and discuss conservation issues concerning tree, ground and flying squirrels from anywhere in the world.
Who we are #
In this research group, we study the behavioural ecology and evolutionary biology of animal populations, often within the context of environmental and habitat change. We work across multiple landscapes in India, including the Trans-Himalayas, Western, and Eastern Ghats. Our model system involves species from the squirrel family (Sciuridae) but also extends to the Pikas (Ochotonidae). We also encourage public participation in squirrel data-gathering, through our citizen science initiatives. More about what we do is here.
This research group is based out of the Biology Department at IISER Tirupati.
Latest News #
August 2024
- Mongabay India covers our pika paper in the Journal of Mammalogy. Read more here.
July 2024
- Three from the Sciurid Lab get awarded degrees at the Convocation - Nivetha Murugesan and Harsha Kumar get their PhD degrees (the first two from the Sciurid Lab!), and Kavitha Unni gets her Masters degree (our seventh in-house MS thesis).
- Nandini Rajamani attends Sci Foo Camp 2024 in Cambridge, UK.
June 2024
- Nivetha Murugesan defends her dissertation titled "Evolution of color and pattern traits in squirrels: an integrative approach".
- Harsha Kumar defends his dissertation titled "Adaptations of pikas to alpine stressors of the Tibetan Marginal Mountains".
- Our paper on haying behaviour in pikas is published in the Journal of Mammalogy. https://doi.org/10.1093/jmamma...
- The lab attends IWEC 2024, where multiple people present their work. IISER Tirupati researchers and alumni represent! More here https://x.com/swatiudayraj/sta...
May 2024
- Kavitha Unni, BSMS student at IISER Tirupati, defends her Masters thesis titled "Understanding patterns of sympatry and resource partitioning in mesocarnivores", a collaborative project with Dr Shomita Mukherjee, SACON-WII.
March 2024
- Swati Udayraj presents at the EnviroSummit 2024 at MIT-WPU Pune on 1st March 2024, and wins the Best thematic talk award (Urban Ecology) for her talk titled "Impervious surface area and tree cover predict palm squirrel occupancy across a forest to urban gradient". Authors:Swati Udayraj, Aravind PS, Rakesh Kumar Muni, Senan D’Souza, Anupama M Devi, Rithika S, Debarpita Das, Sushma HS, and Nandini Rajamani.
November 2023
- Nivetha Murugesan presents her PhD pre-synopsis talk.
October 2023
- Swati Udayraj published a database methods paper and Version 1 of the Squirrels of South Asia database on the GBIF platform.
- Swati Udayraj wins 1st Prize for Most Observations by a Woman Observer with iNaturalist. India's Nature-Monsoon Beauty 2023 powered by iNaturalist.
July 2023
- Eight lab members present talks, speed talks, and posters at the 59th Annual Conference of the Association of Tropical Biology and Conservation at Coimbatore between 02-06 July 2023. More here.
- Harsha Kumar presents his PhD pre-synopsis talk.
June 2023
- Nandini presents gives a talk synthesising our work at colour and camouflage in palm squirrels at the Understanding Behaviour conference, IISER Kolkata between 27-30 June 2023.
March 2023
- Swati Udayraj wins 2nd Prize for Most Observations by a Woman Observer with iNaturalist. India's Nature-Monsoon Beauty 2022 powered by iNaturalist.
February 2023
- Harsha Kumar wins the Best Poster Presentation award at the 4th Annual Conference of ISEB. Poster title: Evolution of lifestyle and associated behavioural traits in Lagomorphs, by Harsha Kumar, Nandini Rajamani.
- Harsha, Nivetha and Swati present talks and posters at the 4th Annual Conference of ISEB at Ahmedabad University between 9-11 February 2023.
- Harsha Jagadeesh wins 3rd position at Talk Your Thesis(#TYT2023) event at India Science Fest 2023. Talk title: "It's a Squirrel Thing".
November 2022
- Swati Udayraj presents a talk on our work on the Squirrels of India database at the Cit Sci India conference. Talk title: Building a Database using Unconventional Sources: Squirrels of India, by Swati Udayraj, Senan D'Souza, Aravind P S, Nandini Rajamani
Team group photo © Dhiraj Das 
Team observing Nubra Pika on the banks of the Indus River © Kishorekumar P. 
Faecal sample collection at a marmot colony © Kishorekumar P. 
Preparing a drone to collect imagery over Nubra pika habitat © Senan D'Souza
Drone panorama of Nubra Pika habitat and surrounding. © Sciurid Lab x T4W
- Swati Udayraj gives a talk on our work on the Squirrels of India database at the TDWG 2022 conference, October 17-21, 2022. https://biss.pensoft.net/artic...
- After months of work spread out over the year, the field work on the occurrence of palm squirrels across the Tirupati landscape is complete. Kudos to the large team of interns and lab members!
- Mingyur Rigzen's article, 'Melting Glaciers and Human Adaptability' is published in Sanctuary Nature magazine.
- Three Masters students who worked in the lab submit their dissertations over the summer - Keerthi O. and Harsha Jagadeesh from IISER Tirupati, and Rithika S. from Pondicherry University.
- The Eastern Ghats Symposium 2022 was held on 30th April and 1st May at the Marasa Sarovar, Tirupati, organised by Dr. Nandini Rajamani and team.
