The Sciurid Lab wishes you a productive and peaceful 2026!

Our paper on the novel nesting behaviour of giant squirrels is published in Global Ecology and Conservation. Exotic timber plantations as nesting sites for the endemic Indian Giant Squirrel Ratufa indica in the Palani Hills, Western Ghats, India. Read it here.

Nandini presents our crowdsourced palm squirrel work titled "Cataloguing and mapping life of India: Biodiversity informatics in India", a webinar that is part of the series Biodiversity Conversations: India’s opportunities and challenges.

Pooja Gupta begins her art-science research scholarship with Creature Conserve in collaboration with the Sciurid Lab.

Nandini begins her term as the Secretary of the Ethological Society of India.

Read our paper "Evolution of burrowing and associated behavioral traits in Lagomorphs", posted on BioRxiv.

Amira Sophia SP, Masters's student at AVC Mayiladuthurai College, submits her Master's thesis titled "A study on the acoustics of Malabar giant squirrel, Ratufa indica, in Kodaikanal".

CitSci India 2020 virtual conference, where the lab presents two posters - one on Squirrels (Bishwarup, Senan, Swati, Aravind) and one on Moths (Harsha, Suyash, Senan, Viral). Nandini is on the Steering Committee of the event and co-author on a poster with researchers from SACON.

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.

Swati Udayraj, a PhD student at the Sciurid Lab, successfully defends her PhD dissertation titled "Understanding squirrel distribution in response to anthropogenic change in South Asia".

Read our collaborative paper on sustainable food production in Andhra Pradesh, published in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems "Integrated land systems for sustainable food production and biodiversity conservation in the semi-arid to moist tropics: stakeholder perspectives from Andhra Pradesh, India"

Eenadu Telugu Newspaper coverage of our work

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.

Nandini is an invited panellist at the Arctic Circle India Forum Meeting, 3- 4 May 2025, New Delhi, where she talks about our work on small mammals in the trans-Himalaya.

Nandini is an invited speaker at the Healing Earth 5.0 conference hosted by Ashoka University, New Delhi, between 7-8 May 2025, where she talks about how small mammals adapt to their environments.

Shreya Peter, Masters student from MIT Pune, submits her thesis. She worked with the Sciurid Lab on palm squirrel feeding habits.

Aritra Bhattacharya, Masters student from Pondicherry University, submits and defends his thesis. He worked with the Sciurid Lab on palm squirrel nesting habits across elevations.

Nandini is an invited speaker at the Genome Informatics Across Scales Conference at NCBS-TIFR, between 23rd – 26th April, 2025.

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.

Nandini is a panelist at the India Science Fest 2025, held at Ferguson College, Pune.

Manzoor Dar successfully defended his PhD dissertation titled "Assessment of species diversity, functional traits, and dietary signatures of plants in relation to feeding ecology of critically endangered Cervus hanglu hanglu (Hangul) in Dachigam National Park" at the University of Kashmir. Manzoor was co-advised by Prof Manzoor Shah (University of Kashmir) and Nandini.

The Sciurid Lab wishes you a year of small mammals and adventure!

Mongabay India covers our pika paper in the Journal of Mammalogy. Read more here.

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 Master's degree (our seventh in-house MS thesis).

Nandini Rajamani attends Sci Foo Camp 2024 in Cambridge, UK.

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...

Read our 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.

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.

Swati Udayraj wins 2nd Prize for Most Observations by a Woman Observer with iNaturalist. India's Nature-Monsoon Beauty 2022 powered by iNaturalist.

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".