Life in the slow lane
(Or The life of pi – r – squared) Circa August 2019.
After a stint as the Director at an environmental NGO, I recently returned to my academic position at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. With much joy. It gave me a chance to ask what it is that we, as scientists, cherish so much about our profession.
All things considered, it’s a good life. Yes, there are frustrations with the scarcity of funds, the angst of accounts, the stress of tenure, the desire for recognition and so on. But at the end of the day, we determine what we do, when and how we do it, and why.
For example, I often go for a mid-morning workout to the gym. Or for a mid-afternoon swim. Sometimes I think about the scientific questions we are grappling with while running or working out. It helps clear the mind.
Of course, many scientists work incessantly like ants in a colony. Fourteen-hour work days plus weekends. But it’s up to you, more or less. Unless you are teaching, you can determine our own schedules. At work, there is usually a line of researchers and students. And a queue of emails, and a pile of pending manuscripts. Some of these can remain in your ‘to do’ list for years. Or even decades. Last year, I published a paper that I first presented at a conference in 2000. Eighteen years later. I guess we take inspiration from Darwin who shelved his theory of natural selection for over a decade while he worked on the taxonomy of barnacles.
Scientists divide their time between research and teaching (and of course, some amount of administration). The proportion of these activities often depends on the type of institution and varies in different parts of the world. Universities with undergraduate programmes will have a greater teaching requirement, while some research institutes only have graduate (PhD) programmes, and a smaller teaching requirement.
Philosophically, ‘science’ can mean different things. To scientists, it’s the idealized process of making inferences about the world. To the public, it is what scientists discover. But it is also what scientists actually do, warts and all.
Generally, there are two types of academics: problem solvers and mentors. As students, we are all meant to be problem solvers. Typically, students will spend the first year attending courses, reading background literature, identifying a gap in knowledge, framing a set of hypotheses, and developing a proposal that outlines how they might go about answering their question. For example, in ecology, one might ask why there are more species in the tropics, or why animals live in social groups, or how animals navigate.
Of course, in a number of scientific disciplines, the laboratory is a factory (with a manager) and students don’t really get to decide what their question is or think though an actual scientific problem. Those aside, the goal of a student is to solve a problem be it through equations, experiments, observations or theory. The postdoctoral period is an extended childhood.
After this, you are expected to grow up and ‘manage’ your students while they solve problems. Being a mentor has its joys – you get to guide generations of students through their thinking. Some you facilitate, a few you inspire, and the rest you push through. Some go on to become far more successful than you ever were. All good. But then, you get to do little of the actual thing that you thought you would do when you chose this career – the experiments, field work, the solving of equations, the unraveling of the mystery.
Some scientists remain problem-solvers at heart. For life. From theoretical physicists to engineers to ecologists, there are those who remain cussedly focused on solving their equations, collecting their own data, doing their own analysis.
Of course, there are a few hybrids – those who have become resigned to their role as mentors and managers but carve out a part of their life for their ‘own research’. They are fiercely protective of the small amounts of time they get for this.
And then there’s the world’s view of us. From nuclear bombs to neuroscience to number theory, science can straddle a pretty broad spectrum of application in society. The scientist caricature is either that of the mad scientist, concocting a lively mixture of unknown consequence, or of an absent-minded professor. These are diametrically opposite in their symbolism. The former is that of incalculable social relevance – the concoction will either save or destroy the world. The latter represents an arcane irrelevance, an utter insignificance, which is probably closer to the truth.
Around the world, scientists are being urged to reach out to society. Most do with reluctance, like a visit to the dentist. Or tax consultant. But it turns out that some scientists are eminently capable of normal conversation. And they’ve realized — through programmes for science communication, including many citizen and community science initiatives — that engaging people in science creates broader ownership of the enterprise, while also generating large datasets.
Like any other endeavor, science is often about success, fame rather than fortune for the greater part. But for many, the real love is the primeval primate curiosity, the puzzle, the hunt. It’s this last part that, with all of its peaks and valleys, makes the game worth playing.
After a stint as the Director at an environmental NGO, I recently returned to my academic position at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. With much joy. It gave me a chance to ask what it is that we, as scientists, cherish so much about our profession.
All things considered, it’s a good life. Yes, there are frustrations with the scarcity of funds, the angst of accounts, the stress of tenure, the desire for recognition and so on. But at the end of the day, we determine what we do, when and how we do it, and why.
For example, I often go for a mid-morning workout to the gym. Or for a mid-afternoon swim. Sometimes I think about the scientific questions we are grappling with while running or working out. It helps clear the mind.
Of course, many scientists work incessantly like ants in a colony. Fourteen-hour work days plus weekends. But it’s up to you, more or less. Unless you are teaching, you can determine our own schedules. At work, there is usually a line of researchers and students. And a queue of emails, and a pile of pending manuscripts. Some of these can remain in your ‘to do’ list for years. Or even decades. Last year, I published a paper that I first presented at a conference in 2000. Eighteen years later. I guess we take inspiration from Darwin who shelved his theory of natural selection for over a decade while he worked on the taxonomy of barnacles.
Scientists divide their time between research and teaching (and of course, some amount of administration). The proportion of these activities often depends on the type of institution and varies in different parts of the world. Universities with undergraduate programmes will have a greater teaching requirement, while some research institutes only have graduate (PhD) programmes, and a smaller teaching requirement.
Philosophically, ‘science’ can mean different things. To scientists, it’s the idealized process of making inferences about the world. To the public, it is what scientists discover. But it is also what scientists actually do, warts and all.
Generally, there are two types of academics: problem solvers and mentors. As students, we are all meant to be problem solvers. Typically, students will spend the first year attending courses, reading background literature, identifying a gap in knowledge, framing a set of hypotheses, and developing a proposal that outlines how they might go about answering their question. For example, in ecology, one might ask why there are more species in the tropics, or why animals live in social groups, or how animals navigate.
Of course, in a number of scientific disciplines, the laboratory is a factory (with a manager) and students don’t really get to decide what their question is or think though an actual scientific problem. Those aside, the goal of a student is to solve a problem be it through equations, experiments, observations or theory. The postdoctoral period is an extended childhood.
After this, you are expected to grow up and ‘manage’ your students while they solve problems. Being a mentor has its joys – you get to guide generations of students through their thinking. Some you facilitate, a few you inspire, and the rest you push through. Some go on to become far more successful than you ever were. All good. But then, you get to do little of the actual thing that you thought you would do when you chose this career – the experiments, field work, the solving of equations, the unraveling of the mystery.
Some scientists remain problem-solvers at heart. For life. From theoretical physicists to engineers to ecologists, there are those who remain cussedly focused on solving their equations, collecting their own data, doing their own analysis.
Of course, there are a few hybrids – those who have become resigned to their role as mentors and managers but carve out a part of their life for their ‘own research’. They are fiercely protective of the small amounts of time they get for this.
And then there’s the world’s view of us. From nuclear bombs to neuroscience to number theory, science can straddle a pretty broad spectrum of application in society. The scientist caricature is either that of the mad scientist, concocting a lively mixture of unknown consequence, or of an absent-minded professor. These are diametrically opposite in their symbolism. The former is that of incalculable social relevance – the concoction will either save or destroy the world. The latter represents an arcane irrelevance, an utter insignificance, which is probably closer to the truth.
Around the world, scientists are being urged to reach out to society. Most do with reluctance, like a visit to the dentist. Or tax consultant. But it turns out that some scientists are eminently capable of normal conversation. And they’ve realized — through programmes for science communication, including many citizen and community science initiatives — that engaging people in science creates broader ownership of the enterprise, while also generating large datasets.
Like any other endeavor, science is often about success, fame rather than fortune for the greater part. But for many, the real love is the primeval primate curiosity, the puzzle, the hunt. It’s this last part that, with all of its peaks and valleys, makes the game worth playing.
Turtles, torches and naps on the beach:
the life of a nocturnal ecologist
Originally published in The Mint, September, 2019. Click here.
An ecologist’s day begins at the crack of dawn. The intrepid young woman or man dons a set of camouflage and boots, grabs binoculars and notes, and sets off into the forest searching for birds, butterflies or snakes. The quest is interrupted by a herd of passing elephants, and punctuated with leeches and ticks and mosquitoes. Well, that’s one kind of ecologist anyway.
In my first tryst with ecology, the only time I saw the crack of dawn was when we worked late. Sometimes we woke up because the dew had drenched our sheets while we slept on the beach. Sea turtles nest at night. And so our work day began between 8-10pm. Our work wear was shorts and flip flops. No threat of leeches or ticks. Or elephants.
In the late 1980s, continuing the tradition of stalwarts such as Romulus Whitaker, founder of the Madras Snake Park and Madras Crocodile Bank, a group of us conducted turtle walks along the coast of Chennai. We had just started the Students’ Sea Turtle Conservation Network, and collected eggs to prevent them from being poached and relocated them to a hatchery. Many of us worked through the night and attended college or work the next day (as SSTCN’s volunteers continue to do even today). We were mentored and inspired by Satish Bhaskar, who had covered much of India’s coasts, including the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and beaches in West Papua, documenting sea turtle nesting sites.
I remember my first nesting Ridley. Spotting the tracks on the beach, we followed it till we caught sight of the nesting turtle. I still recall the incomparable thrill of seeing this wild animal in the middle of a perfectly urban beach. As motivated as we were, as romantic the idea of college students in a conservation programme, as passionate are turtle people the world over, the entirely nocturnal schedule is a biological challenge. There is something quite strange about ending your day with coffee and breakfast and then taking a very long nap. Waking to lunch, and perhaps napping again.
After a brief interlude, I returned to research on sea turtles in the late 1990s, with a project on the mass nesting Ridley population in Odisha. We would set off in a boat to the island where the nesting occurred, a small sand bar, and spend the night tagging and counting turtles. Over the past 10 years, my research team has monitored Ridleys at Rushikulya in Odisha. When arribadas (mass nesting of sea turtles) occur, the beach is packed with thousands and thousands of nesting Ridleys. Researchers stumble around, counting them and collecting other biological data. You run into forest guards, tourists, VIP visitors. Everything looks different in the morning. The turtles are gone, but the track-covered beach tells the tale.
Studying leatherbacks in the Nicobar Islands was even stranger. Often we would hear them before we saw them, their long fore flippers slapping against their sides. We would eventually see silhouettes of the ancient creatures dragging themselves ashore. We’d watch while they dug cavernous pits with their elephant-ear-like rear flippers. Our team on Little Andaman Island monitors the beaches each winter. Some of the turtles we have tagged have migrated as far as Western Australia and Madagascar. A bit bizarre, the thought that this giant mariner we caught a moonlit glimpse of on a remote beach is chomping on jellyfish half an ocean away.
Sea turtle biologists are not the only nocturnal ecologists. Many of my students work on frogs, lizards and snakes. Much of their work gets done by torchlight in the rain, in wet, muddy, leech-infested forests. Not to mention those who work on nocturnal mammals and birds.
Working at night is simultaneously demanding and irresistible in some primeval way. For all of us, that sudden sighting of a creature in the narrow beam of a torch is a pure rush, unlike any other, with little other sensory distraction.
Perhaps nothing captures it as well as being underwater at night. There is something quite mysterious and charming about night diving. One sees many creatures that are invisible during the day—nudibranchs and octopuses, parrot fish sleeping cocooned in their own mucus. Moonlight filtering through from above, swirls of bioluminescent algae that light up as you move through the water, the weightlessness, the sound of your breathing—at times like this, you wonder about how much there is to learn. The darkness that is a shroud can be your greatest guide.
An ecologist’s day begins at the crack of dawn. The intrepid young woman or man dons a set of camouflage and boots, grabs binoculars and notes, and sets off into the forest searching for birds, butterflies or snakes. The quest is interrupted by a herd of passing elephants, and punctuated with leeches and ticks and mosquitoes. Well, that’s one kind of ecologist anyway.
In my first tryst with ecology, the only time I saw the crack of dawn was when we worked late. Sometimes we woke up because the dew had drenched our sheets while we slept on the beach. Sea turtles nest at night. And so our work day began between 8-10pm. Our work wear was shorts and flip flops. No threat of leeches or ticks. Or elephants.
In the late 1980s, continuing the tradition of stalwarts such as Romulus Whitaker, founder of the Madras Snake Park and Madras Crocodile Bank, a group of us conducted turtle walks along the coast of Chennai. We had just started the Students’ Sea Turtle Conservation Network, and collected eggs to prevent them from being poached and relocated them to a hatchery. Many of us worked through the night and attended college or work the next day (as SSTCN’s volunteers continue to do even today). We were mentored and inspired by Satish Bhaskar, who had covered much of India’s coasts, including the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and beaches in West Papua, documenting sea turtle nesting sites.
I remember my first nesting Ridley. Spotting the tracks on the beach, we followed it till we caught sight of the nesting turtle. I still recall the incomparable thrill of seeing this wild animal in the middle of a perfectly urban beach. As motivated as we were, as romantic the idea of college students in a conservation programme, as passionate are turtle people the world over, the entirely nocturnal schedule is a biological challenge. There is something quite strange about ending your day with coffee and breakfast and then taking a very long nap. Waking to lunch, and perhaps napping again.
After a brief interlude, I returned to research on sea turtles in the late 1990s, with a project on the mass nesting Ridley population in Odisha. We would set off in a boat to the island where the nesting occurred, a small sand bar, and spend the night tagging and counting turtles. Over the past 10 years, my research team has monitored Ridleys at Rushikulya in Odisha. When arribadas (mass nesting of sea turtles) occur, the beach is packed with thousands and thousands of nesting Ridleys. Researchers stumble around, counting them and collecting other biological data. You run into forest guards, tourists, VIP visitors. Everything looks different in the morning. The turtles are gone, but the track-covered beach tells the tale.
Studying leatherbacks in the Nicobar Islands was even stranger. Often we would hear them before we saw them, their long fore flippers slapping against their sides. We would eventually see silhouettes of the ancient creatures dragging themselves ashore. We’d watch while they dug cavernous pits with their elephant-ear-like rear flippers. Our team on Little Andaman Island monitors the beaches each winter. Some of the turtles we have tagged have migrated as far as Western Australia and Madagascar. A bit bizarre, the thought that this giant mariner we caught a moonlit glimpse of on a remote beach is chomping on jellyfish half an ocean away.
Sea turtle biologists are not the only nocturnal ecologists. Many of my students work on frogs, lizards and snakes. Much of their work gets done by torchlight in the rain, in wet, muddy, leech-infested forests. Not to mention those who work on nocturnal mammals and birds.
Working at night is simultaneously demanding and irresistible in some primeval way. For all of us, that sudden sighting of a creature in the narrow beam of a torch is a pure rush, unlike any other, with little other sensory distraction.
Perhaps nothing captures it as well as being underwater at night. There is something quite mysterious and charming about night diving. One sees many creatures that are invisible during the day—nudibranchs and octopuses, parrot fish sleeping cocooned in their own mucus. Moonlight filtering through from above, swirls of bioluminescent algae that light up as you move through the water, the weightlessness, the sound of your breathing—at times like this, you wonder about how much there is to learn. The darkness that is a shroud can be your greatest guide.
Island fever: a lifelong obsession with the Andaman and Nicobar Islands
Originally published in Roundglass Sustain, June 2020. Click here for the visually appealing version.
Islands are irresistibly charming. Whether in folklore, movies, or scientific discovery, from geology to biogeography, islands have played a large role in our imagination. Robinson Crusoe, Lord of the Flies, Treasure Island, the list of books about islands goes on — there’s something simultaneously romantic and primeval about them.
In the 1970s, led by Rom and Zai Whitaker, founders of the Madras Snake Park and the Madras Crocodile Bank, naturalists in mainland India developed a fascination for the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. In one of her editorials Zai readily admitted that they all had “Andaman fever” and could not stop thinking about it. Rom gave up his American citizenship so that he could travel to the islands and work there on king cobras and crocodiles. Satish Bhaskar, the original sea turtle explorer, spent months traveling to the furthest reaches of these islands and camping by himself on remote beaches.
As a college student in Chennai, I too got sucked into this vortex of obsession with the islands. This archipelago, born of a submerged mountain chain – the Arakan Yoma that stretches South from Myanmar – with its rich tropical forests, its (once) pristine beaches, its blue waters and coral reefs, posed a temptation that no reasonable naturalist could resist.
It would be a decade before I got an opportunity to finally visit. In 2001, my partner Meera Oommen and I set out for the Nicobars, where I would initiate my work on leatherback turtle genetics at Galathea, one of the largest rookeries for the species in the Indian Ocean. Meera would conduct a project on the little-known Nicobar tree shrew, finding a strange feeding association with the greater racket-tailed drongo and a sparrow-hawk, which one would normally expect to be its predator. Just a few years later in 2004, this beach and many others would be wiped out by a tsunami. Thousands lost their lives, including a field researcher and naturalists staying at the same camp we did. Miraculously, our field assistant, Agu, would survive the tsunami and an ordeal of thirteen days drifting at sea.
For the most part, field researchers did not worry about tsunamis when they visited — there was mostly the spectre of mosquitoes and malaria, especially the cerebral variety which kills quickly if not treated. Most researchers contracted one form of malaria or another when they worked there. In fact, the first attempts at colonisation of the islands in the late eighteenth century failed because of tropical diseases and the hostility of indigenous communities. The islands were finally settled in the mid-nineteenth century for the establishment of a penal settlement.
The Andamans are home to several indigenous tribes, all of ancient origin, who are believed to have migrated to the islands about 15,000 years ago from eastern India. The Jarawa remain confined to a reserve in the south and middle Andamans, and the Onge to Little Andaman. The Sentinelese, still with no formal contact with modern society, live on North Sentinel Island to the west of the Andamans. Few members of the Greater Andamanese survive. The Nicobaris, a coastal community throughout the Nicobar group, and the Shompen, a forest tribe in the Nicobars, are believed to have migrated from Southeast Asia. Today, the islands are occupied by a range of settlers from across India.
After the tsunami, I returned to the islands in 2007 to establish a long-term monitoring programme on Little Andaman Island. We surveyed two remote beaches, our boat nearly capsized while landing at West Bay, and we spent 12 hours walking across coral and swamp to reach our rendezvous point with the boat. All in a day’s work. Since then, our field team sets up camp each year, for nearly ten years now, and spends two months monitoring leatherbacks, pretty much out of touch with civilisation.
Following their intrepid surveys for crocodiles, sea turtles and other fauna through the 1970s and 1980s, the Madras Crocodile Bank decided to set up the Andaman and Nicobar Environment Team (ANET) in Wandoor, not far from Port Blair. ANET serves as a field research base for multiple research organisations and engages with policy-related issues on the islands. Researchers based at ANET work on various aspects of ecology including coral reefs, reef fish, dugongs, sharks, sea turtles, as well as on human ecology, ecotourism, and coastal regulation policy. There is an increasing emphasis on marine ecology, using SCUBA to study coral reefs, reef fish, and dugongs.
Some have worked there for over a decade, some for a quarter of a century, the better part of their adult lives. They arrive and can never leave. Everyone has some adventure or the other. Maybe none quite as dramatic as Agu, but still. All of them have “Andaman fever”, not to be confused with a little-known tropical disease that does in fact occur in the islands. This fever is an obsession with this tropical paradise, with its marine and terrestrial riches, its native and settler culture, its struggle with development. A desire to be there and contribute in some way to preserving its biodiversity and its culture.
Islands are irresistibly charming. Whether in folklore, movies, or scientific discovery, from geology to biogeography, islands have played a large role in our imagination. Robinson Crusoe, Lord of the Flies, Treasure Island, the list of books about islands goes on — there’s something simultaneously romantic and primeval about them.
In the 1970s, led by Rom and Zai Whitaker, founders of the Madras Snake Park and the Madras Crocodile Bank, naturalists in mainland India developed a fascination for the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. In one of her editorials Zai readily admitted that they all had “Andaman fever” and could not stop thinking about it. Rom gave up his American citizenship so that he could travel to the islands and work there on king cobras and crocodiles. Satish Bhaskar, the original sea turtle explorer, spent months traveling to the furthest reaches of these islands and camping by himself on remote beaches.
As a college student in Chennai, I too got sucked into this vortex of obsession with the islands. This archipelago, born of a submerged mountain chain – the Arakan Yoma that stretches South from Myanmar – with its rich tropical forests, its (once) pristine beaches, its blue waters and coral reefs, posed a temptation that no reasonable naturalist could resist.
It would be a decade before I got an opportunity to finally visit. In 2001, my partner Meera Oommen and I set out for the Nicobars, where I would initiate my work on leatherback turtle genetics at Galathea, one of the largest rookeries for the species in the Indian Ocean. Meera would conduct a project on the little-known Nicobar tree shrew, finding a strange feeding association with the greater racket-tailed drongo and a sparrow-hawk, which one would normally expect to be its predator. Just a few years later in 2004, this beach and many others would be wiped out by a tsunami. Thousands lost their lives, including a field researcher and naturalists staying at the same camp we did. Miraculously, our field assistant, Agu, would survive the tsunami and an ordeal of thirteen days drifting at sea.
For the most part, field researchers did not worry about tsunamis when they visited — there was mostly the spectre of mosquitoes and malaria, especially the cerebral variety which kills quickly if not treated. Most researchers contracted one form of malaria or another when they worked there. In fact, the first attempts at colonisation of the islands in the late eighteenth century failed because of tropical diseases and the hostility of indigenous communities. The islands were finally settled in the mid-nineteenth century for the establishment of a penal settlement.
The Andamans are home to several indigenous tribes, all of ancient origin, who are believed to have migrated to the islands about 15,000 years ago from eastern India. The Jarawa remain confined to a reserve in the south and middle Andamans, and the Onge to Little Andaman. The Sentinelese, still with no formal contact with modern society, live on North Sentinel Island to the west of the Andamans. Few members of the Greater Andamanese survive. The Nicobaris, a coastal community throughout the Nicobar group, and the Shompen, a forest tribe in the Nicobars, are believed to have migrated from Southeast Asia. Today, the islands are occupied by a range of settlers from across India.
After the tsunami, I returned to the islands in 2007 to establish a long-term monitoring programme on Little Andaman Island. We surveyed two remote beaches, our boat nearly capsized while landing at West Bay, and we spent 12 hours walking across coral and swamp to reach our rendezvous point with the boat. All in a day’s work. Since then, our field team sets up camp each year, for nearly ten years now, and spends two months monitoring leatherbacks, pretty much out of touch with civilisation.
Following their intrepid surveys for crocodiles, sea turtles and other fauna through the 1970s and 1980s, the Madras Crocodile Bank decided to set up the Andaman and Nicobar Environment Team (ANET) in Wandoor, not far from Port Blair. ANET serves as a field research base for multiple research organisations and engages with policy-related issues on the islands. Researchers based at ANET work on various aspects of ecology including coral reefs, reef fish, dugongs, sharks, sea turtles, as well as on human ecology, ecotourism, and coastal regulation policy. There is an increasing emphasis on marine ecology, using SCUBA to study coral reefs, reef fish, and dugongs.
Some have worked there for over a decade, some for a quarter of a century, the better part of their adult lives. They arrive and can never leave. Everyone has some adventure or the other. Maybe none quite as dramatic as Agu, but still. All of them have “Andaman fever”, not to be confused with a little-known tropical disease that does in fact occur in the islands. This fever is an obsession with this tropical paradise, with its marine and terrestrial riches, its native and settler culture, its struggle with development. A desire to be there and contribute in some way to preserving its biodiversity and its culture.
The blue mountains: love and longing for the shola grasslands
Originally published in Roundglass Sustain, July 2020. Click here for the visually appealing version.
Nilgiris. The blue mountains. An epithet derived from the shrub, kurinchi, which flowers once in 12 years, covering the landscape in a carpet of purplish-blue. A mosaic of grassland with dense patches of sholas, or montane evergreen forests covers the higher altitudes of this range and of many others in the southern Western Ghats.
I first arrived here as a graduate student in the early 1990s, and after heaving past the smoky town of Ooty, was greeted by the sea of blue at Avalanche. Little did I realise that I would not see the kurinchi flower again, that it skipped past the timelines of a PhD. On my very first exploration of the Upper Nilgiris, I was hooked. Maduppumalai, the shola of folds, with little rivulets of forest that flowed up the cracks in the hill; Bangitappal, an extraordinarily beautiful valley with a clear cold stream snaking through it, and little cowpats of sholas on the surrounding slopes; Sispara with its thick evergreen patches that tripped at the edge of the mountain, and dipped steeply into Silent Valley; Thaishola, indeed the mother of all sholas of the upper plateau, stretching hundreds of hectares across the hills, slowly segueing to the plains of Anaikatti. Beckoned by their breathtaking beauty, I decided to pursue my PhD in this montane landscape.
Nearly two centuries before, these rolling hills, and the vastly more conducive climate compared to dust and sweat of the plains, and the picture pretty vistas had also instantly appealed to the British. Reminded of England, whether the dales of Yorkshire or the vales of the Lake District, itinerant Englishmen immediately set up camp there by the early nineteenth century. Adding a touch of scotch broom here and there to decorate (and later invade) the landscape, bureaucrats and businessmen then covered over the grasslands with tea gardens. The first of these were planted by prisoners of war from the Opium wars in the 1850s, who were brought in to lay Railway lines and for other labour. Not content, they added the utterly exotic (and water guzzling) Eucalyptus that, sadly, the early Indian tourist actually associated with the look and smell of a hill station.
Ironically, though it was the very grasslands that had attracted the British to the hills, their planters and foresters had a disdain for it that, born out of both economics and ecology. For the first part, it provided no revenue at all. Hence its conversion to tea and timber. But equally, they believed that the high-altitude grasslands of the Nilgiris were man-made, a product of human colonisation of the hills a thousand years before. This debate played out in the pages of the journal Indian Forester in the 1930s, where Bor, an English forester argued this point of view against Ranganathan, an Indian, who made the case that grasslands were a natural ecosystem in their own right.
While this argument remained unresolved for over a half century, the step-motherly treatment of grasslands would lead to the continued planting of acacia and other exotics by the forest department of independent India. Finally, in the 1980s and 1990s, evidence from peat bogs using analyses of pollen from the past, and chemical analysis of isotopes, would show that the grasslands had been around for 30,000 years or more, long before humans showed up. One of my students would then find grassland adapted frogs that had evolved 15 million years ago, around the time that grasslands had spread around the world, settling that debate once and for all.
The shola grasslands across the high elevations of the southern Western Ghats are enchanting, both aesthetically and ecologically. Apart from the Niligris, they occur in Anamalais (Grass Hills), adjoining Munnar, Palani Hills and in Agasthyamalai. Many researchers have wandered up and down these slopes fascinated by the landscape itself or the flora and fauna in it. Research has shown that forests have expanded and contracted with global warming and cooling in the geological past; and the grasslands are believed to be maintained by frost and fire. And evolutionary biogeography studies on various fauna including birds, frogs, lizards and snakes suggest that these high-altitude areas have served as cradles of diversification, with many species evolving in these landscapes.
My own work there was framed within the theory of island biogeography, which had been proposed a few decades earlier by MacArthur and Wilson to explain species diversity on islands. Expanding this to habitat islands such as the shola forests (surrounded by the ‘sea of grassland’), I explored small mammal communities in sholas of different types and sizes. Slipping and sliding down the steep, sometimes soggy, and always treacherous slopes of the sholas, we set hundreds of traps each day, and captured various species of rats and mice.
While forest rodents may not be Page 3 species, these forests and grasslands are in fact a treasure of rare and endemic species. From large mammals such as the Nilgiri tahr and Nilgiri marten, to birds such as the Nilgiri sholakili and the black and orange flycatcher, to a range of smaller vertebrates, these hills are rich in native biodiversity. Many species, such as the Nilgiri tahr, the Nilgiri pipit, the Salea lizards, Perrotet’s vine snake and the horse-shoe pit viper, as well as many bush frogs, are adapted to the grasslands in particular. The destruction of this habitat over the last century by both our colonial masters and later, their willing students, has affected these species the most.
Today, though, there is an increased awareness of the importance of these native habitats, both the unique sholas and the grasslands they nestle in. In general, wildlife has increased in the Upper Nilgiris. Elephants wandered up occasionally in the 1990s, but now they visit more frequently. Bears were unheard of, and of late they have been sighted. Boar are wandering by the roadside. And gaur, once a rare visitor to the southern edges, now roam the landscapes of the upper plateau like cattle. So much so that there have been a few selfie deaths, the surest sign of its being a mainstream phenomenon.
A few years ago, I revisited the hills through my book The adventures of Philautus Frog, the story of a bushfrog that descends from a tree to visit the “great sea” that he has heard of. Though he doesn’t ever reach there, despite help from various endemic friends, he does pass a hill at the western edge of the Nilgiris where it is rumoured that you can see the ships off the Malabar coast on a dark night.
Mountains everywhere are special, from the Andes to Alaska, from the Hindukush to the Himalaya. Everest, Machu Picchu, Khangchendzonga, Kilimanjaro — even the names evoke awe and inspiration. Literature and mythology suggest that we visit them to search for the meaning of life. Maybe there is some truth there. Climbing these mountains might give us a particular view of the world, but exploring them gives us insights into how it came to be what it is.
Nilgiris. The blue mountains. An epithet derived from the shrub, kurinchi, which flowers once in 12 years, covering the landscape in a carpet of purplish-blue. A mosaic of grassland with dense patches of sholas, or montane evergreen forests covers the higher altitudes of this range and of many others in the southern Western Ghats.
I first arrived here as a graduate student in the early 1990s, and after heaving past the smoky town of Ooty, was greeted by the sea of blue at Avalanche. Little did I realise that I would not see the kurinchi flower again, that it skipped past the timelines of a PhD. On my very first exploration of the Upper Nilgiris, I was hooked. Maduppumalai, the shola of folds, with little rivulets of forest that flowed up the cracks in the hill; Bangitappal, an extraordinarily beautiful valley with a clear cold stream snaking through it, and little cowpats of sholas on the surrounding slopes; Sispara with its thick evergreen patches that tripped at the edge of the mountain, and dipped steeply into Silent Valley; Thaishola, indeed the mother of all sholas of the upper plateau, stretching hundreds of hectares across the hills, slowly segueing to the plains of Anaikatti. Beckoned by their breathtaking beauty, I decided to pursue my PhD in this montane landscape.
Nearly two centuries before, these rolling hills, and the vastly more conducive climate compared to dust and sweat of the plains, and the picture pretty vistas had also instantly appealed to the British. Reminded of England, whether the dales of Yorkshire or the vales of the Lake District, itinerant Englishmen immediately set up camp there by the early nineteenth century. Adding a touch of scotch broom here and there to decorate (and later invade) the landscape, bureaucrats and businessmen then covered over the grasslands with tea gardens. The first of these were planted by prisoners of war from the Opium wars in the 1850s, who were brought in to lay Railway lines and for other labour. Not content, they added the utterly exotic (and water guzzling) Eucalyptus that, sadly, the early Indian tourist actually associated with the look and smell of a hill station.
Ironically, though it was the very grasslands that had attracted the British to the hills, their planters and foresters had a disdain for it that, born out of both economics and ecology. For the first part, it provided no revenue at all. Hence its conversion to tea and timber. But equally, they believed that the high-altitude grasslands of the Nilgiris were man-made, a product of human colonisation of the hills a thousand years before. This debate played out in the pages of the journal Indian Forester in the 1930s, where Bor, an English forester argued this point of view against Ranganathan, an Indian, who made the case that grasslands were a natural ecosystem in their own right.
While this argument remained unresolved for over a half century, the step-motherly treatment of grasslands would lead to the continued planting of acacia and other exotics by the forest department of independent India. Finally, in the 1980s and 1990s, evidence from peat bogs using analyses of pollen from the past, and chemical analysis of isotopes, would show that the grasslands had been around for 30,000 years or more, long before humans showed up. One of my students would then find grassland adapted frogs that had evolved 15 million years ago, around the time that grasslands had spread around the world, settling that debate once and for all.
The shola grasslands across the high elevations of the southern Western Ghats are enchanting, both aesthetically and ecologically. Apart from the Niligris, they occur in Anamalais (Grass Hills), adjoining Munnar, Palani Hills and in Agasthyamalai. Many researchers have wandered up and down these slopes fascinated by the landscape itself or the flora and fauna in it. Research has shown that forests have expanded and contracted with global warming and cooling in the geological past; and the grasslands are believed to be maintained by frost and fire. And evolutionary biogeography studies on various fauna including birds, frogs, lizards and snakes suggest that these high-altitude areas have served as cradles of diversification, with many species evolving in these landscapes.
My own work there was framed within the theory of island biogeography, which had been proposed a few decades earlier by MacArthur and Wilson to explain species diversity on islands. Expanding this to habitat islands such as the shola forests (surrounded by the ‘sea of grassland’), I explored small mammal communities in sholas of different types and sizes. Slipping and sliding down the steep, sometimes soggy, and always treacherous slopes of the sholas, we set hundreds of traps each day, and captured various species of rats and mice.
While forest rodents may not be Page 3 species, these forests and grasslands are in fact a treasure of rare and endemic species. From large mammals such as the Nilgiri tahr and Nilgiri marten, to birds such as the Nilgiri sholakili and the black and orange flycatcher, to a range of smaller vertebrates, these hills are rich in native biodiversity. Many species, such as the Nilgiri tahr, the Nilgiri pipit, the Salea lizards, Perrotet’s vine snake and the horse-shoe pit viper, as well as many bush frogs, are adapted to the grasslands in particular. The destruction of this habitat over the last century by both our colonial masters and later, their willing students, has affected these species the most.
Today, though, there is an increased awareness of the importance of these native habitats, both the unique sholas and the grasslands they nestle in. In general, wildlife has increased in the Upper Nilgiris. Elephants wandered up occasionally in the 1990s, but now they visit more frequently. Bears were unheard of, and of late they have been sighted. Boar are wandering by the roadside. And gaur, once a rare visitor to the southern edges, now roam the landscapes of the upper plateau like cattle. So much so that there have been a few selfie deaths, the surest sign of its being a mainstream phenomenon.
A few years ago, I revisited the hills through my book The adventures of Philautus Frog, the story of a bushfrog that descends from a tree to visit the “great sea” that he has heard of. Though he doesn’t ever reach there, despite help from various endemic friends, he does pass a hill at the western edge of the Nilgiris where it is rumoured that you can see the ships off the Malabar coast on a dark night.
Mountains everywhere are special, from the Andes to Alaska, from the Hindukush to the Himalaya. Everest, Machu Picchu, Khangchendzonga, Kilimanjaro — even the names evoke awe and inspiration. Literature and mythology suggest that we visit them to search for the meaning of life. Maybe there is some truth there. Climbing these mountains might give us a particular view of the world, but exploring them gives us insights into how it came to be what it is.
The zen of diving
Originally published in Roundglass Sustain, December 2020. Click here for the visually appealing version.
I learned to dive at the ripe age of 40. Up until then, I was a fake marine biologist. I did work on sea turtles, but like most turtle biologists worldwide, only when they came up on land to nest. If I had seen them at all in their natural element, the medium to which they were so beautifully adapted, it was only on the water’s surface from a boat, and maybe once while snorkelling.
So, when my colleague from the Department of Molecular Biophysics at the Indian Institute of Science passed me on the street and announced that he was going to the Lakshadweep islands to learn diving (on the famed government LTC dime), I felt compelled to go as well. So many reasons. At 40, you feel the need to try something you haven’t before. I already had a researcher working on a pilot project on groupers there. And for heaven’s sake, I had never properly seen a turtle under water — a group I had been working on for 20 years.
We arrived in Agatti, families in tow, and spent an extra day or two lounging there because the speedboats to Kadmat had been cancelled. Marine biologist Rohan Arthur and his team had hired a fishing boat, so we set out with them, and seven hours across choppy seas later, arrived at our destination. We started our dive lessons the next day, including the utterly mindless PADI video lessons for the Open Water course, and “pool sessions” in the lagoon.
Breathing through a regulator is not exactly pleasant when you do it for the first time, especially if you are in four feet of water and know you can just stand up and breathe normally. After two days of these skills sessions, practicing clearing one’s mask, removing the Buoyance Control Device (a jacket with an inflatable bladder) and putting it on again, struggling with equalising and buoyancy, the old dogs were not entirely enjoying their new trick.
And then, we went out on our first open water dive. The waters around the Lakshadweep islands can be as clear and still as anywhere in the world. We descended gradually, kneeled on a sandy patch 10 metres below the surface, and looked around at the expanse — a deep blue calm, that faded into inky darkness, like a galaxy far away. Perhaps goatfish scrounged for food in the sand, maybe fusiliers swam above us. We barely noticed. At that moment, I knew I was going to keep coming back.
The next day, we saw a green turtle. As she drifted gracefully, effortlessly buoyant, almost balletic, and then sashayed away with an ever-so deft flap of her flippers, I knew they had been shaped by water. I thought I would never grow tired of seeing them glide over the reef. But you do. Green and hawksbill turtles are actually common in the Lakshadweep islands. A new diver will see one and be all “oh my god” while the rest of us are going “meh” and moving on.
The range of marine life that one might see at a good reef is just astonishing. Corallivores such as butterflyfish, herbivores such as parrotfish, and predators such as trevallies and groupers. The always elegant Moorish idol, the stunning blue tang, the clearly to-be-avoided scorpionfish and lionfish, the aptly named Picasso and moustache triggerfishes, the occasional moray eel, and an endless array of anthias, damselfish, and wrasses. Not to mention invertebrates from pistol shrimp to nudibranchs, to the ever-intriguing octopus.
But I now needed to find reasons to feed the obsession. Fortunately, my student Anne Theo decided (or was gently persuaded) to study mixed species groups of reef fish (shoals of parrotfish or surgeonfish or goatfish being followed by wrasses) for her PhD. At the same time, our researcher at Dakshin Foundation, Mahima Jaini, had also started a project on baitfish and tuna in the Lakshadweep islands. Needless to say, this meant that I had to visit and supervise their work. Amidst the data collection, we had many exciting dives — we saw sharks in Bangaram, eagle rays in Kavaratti, and mixed species groups everywhere. We made a three-day trip to uninhabited Suheli (where my sea turtle mentor, Satish Bhaskar had camped for five months by himself in the late 1970s) and dived at pristine spots.
But diving is not just fun and games unless you are paying a dive shop to do all the heavy lifting (literally). There is a lot of prep in filling tanks, getting the gear ready, planning the dive, and the work underwater. Getting the equipment to the jetty, on the boat, and back after the dive is a fair amount of labour. Long dives can be exhausting. And there’s all the cleaning afterwards (salt is evil) and general maintenance. It’s also important to acquire additional skills through a Rescue Diver course, or Scientific Diver training. Most important is of course experience, and safety is paramount in any sort of diving.
In addition to our ongoing leatherback project, I also started in-water work in the Andaman Islands. I tried (and failed) to convince my student Priti Bangal, to become one of the few (maybe the first person ever) to do a PhD on both birds and fish (she stuck to birds). But I joined other researchers at every opportunity, dived with my 10-year old son when he got certified (with much less fuss than me), and got training from doyens of diving such as Umeed Mistry, Sayeed Saleem, Vikas Nairi, and Leon de Nazareth.
More recently, our work has included setting out Autonomous Reef Monitoring Systems (aka ARMS), a series of PVC plates that look something like an underwater apartment block that marine fauna can settle on, crawl into, and hide under. Six months or a year later, these blocks are removed, and all the fauna is inventoried, some by visual identification, but mostly by molecular genetic methods. And as part of the Environment Ministry’s recently launched Long-Term Ecological Observatories Programme, a group of us will initiate monitoring of multiple marine ecosystems in the Andaman Islands.
In just 10 years, diving has gone from being a niche activity pursued by an intrepid few to an almost standard holiday pastime for many urban travellers. It has also become a pretty standard research option for the growing field of marine biology in India. But the trail was blazed by veterans of in-water research such as Rohan Arthur, Sarang Kulkarni, Naveen Namboothri (all coral reef biologists), Vardhan Patankar (reefs and reef fish) and Elrika D’ Souza (dugongs).
Diving is always a delight (except maybe in bad weather and cold water, but even then). The feeling of weightlessness, the illusion of grace (though some divers are truly dolphinesque), the sense of space, all make it soothing, even meditative. Even after hammering stakes into the ground, completing a transect against the current, or laying endless quadrats, you can let time stand still, neutrally buoyant in that space, surrounded by silence, and forget the world exists. And sometimes, after a night dive, suspended midwater during your safety stop, you twirl your arms and legs, so they light up in the water with luminescent algae, and make the stars dance with you. And feel zen for just a moment.
I learned to dive at the ripe age of 40. Up until then, I was a fake marine biologist. I did work on sea turtles, but like most turtle biologists worldwide, only when they came up on land to nest. If I had seen them at all in their natural element, the medium to which they were so beautifully adapted, it was only on the water’s surface from a boat, and maybe once while snorkelling.
So, when my colleague from the Department of Molecular Biophysics at the Indian Institute of Science passed me on the street and announced that he was going to the Lakshadweep islands to learn diving (on the famed government LTC dime), I felt compelled to go as well. So many reasons. At 40, you feel the need to try something you haven’t before. I already had a researcher working on a pilot project on groupers there. And for heaven’s sake, I had never properly seen a turtle under water — a group I had been working on for 20 years.
We arrived in Agatti, families in tow, and spent an extra day or two lounging there because the speedboats to Kadmat had been cancelled. Marine biologist Rohan Arthur and his team had hired a fishing boat, so we set out with them, and seven hours across choppy seas later, arrived at our destination. We started our dive lessons the next day, including the utterly mindless PADI video lessons for the Open Water course, and “pool sessions” in the lagoon.
Breathing through a regulator is not exactly pleasant when you do it for the first time, especially if you are in four feet of water and know you can just stand up and breathe normally. After two days of these skills sessions, practicing clearing one’s mask, removing the Buoyance Control Device (a jacket with an inflatable bladder) and putting it on again, struggling with equalising and buoyancy, the old dogs were not entirely enjoying their new trick.
And then, we went out on our first open water dive. The waters around the Lakshadweep islands can be as clear and still as anywhere in the world. We descended gradually, kneeled on a sandy patch 10 metres below the surface, and looked around at the expanse — a deep blue calm, that faded into inky darkness, like a galaxy far away. Perhaps goatfish scrounged for food in the sand, maybe fusiliers swam above us. We barely noticed. At that moment, I knew I was going to keep coming back.
The next day, we saw a green turtle. As she drifted gracefully, effortlessly buoyant, almost balletic, and then sashayed away with an ever-so deft flap of her flippers, I knew they had been shaped by water. I thought I would never grow tired of seeing them glide over the reef. But you do. Green and hawksbill turtles are actually common in the Lakshadweep islands. A new diver will see one and be all “oh my god” while the rest of us are going “meh” and moving on.
The range of marine life that one might see at a good reef is just astonishing. Corallivores such as butterflyfish, herbivores such as parrotfish, and predators such as trevallies and groupers. The always elegant Moorish idol, the stunning blue tang, the clearly to-be-avoided scorpionfish and lionfish, the aptly named Picasso and moustache triggerfishes, the occasional moray eel, and an endless array of anthias, damselfish, and wrasses. Not to mention invertebrates from pistol shrimp to nudibranchs, to the ever-intriguing octopus.
But I now needed to find reasons to feed the obsession. Fortunately, my student Anne Theo decided (or was gently persuaded) to study mixed species groups of reef fish (shoals of parrotfish or surgeonfish or goatfish being followed by wrasses) for her PhD. At the same time, our researcher at Dakshin Foundation, Mahima Jaini, had also started a project on baitfish and tuna in the Lakshadweep islands. Needless to say, this meant that I had to visit and supervise their work. Amidst the data collection, we had many exciting dives — we saw sharks in Bangaram, eagle rays in Kavaratti, and mixed species groups everywhere. We made a three-day trip to uninhabited Suheli (where my sea turtle mentor, Satish Bhaskar had camped for five months by himself in the late 1970s) and dived at pristine spots.
But diving is not just fun and games unless you are paying a dive shop to do all the heavy lifting (literally). There is a lot of prep in filling tanks, getting the gear ready, planning the dive, and the work underwater. Getting the equipment to the jetty, on the boat, and back after the dive is a fair amount of labour. Long dives can be exhausting. And there’s all the cleaning afterwards (salt is evil) and general maintenance. It’s also important to acquire additional skills through a Rescue Diver course, or Scientific Diver training. Most important is of course experience, and safety is paramount in any sort of diving.
In addition to our ongoing leatherback project, I also started in-water work in the Andaman Islands. I tried (and failed) to convince my student Priti Bangal, to become one of the few (maybe the first person ever) to do a PhD on both birds and fish (she stuck to birds). But I joined other researchers at every opportunity, dived with my 10-year old son when he got certified (with much less fuss than me), and got training from doyens of diving such as Umeed Mistry, Sayeed Saleem, Vikas Nairi, and Leon de Nazareth.
More recently, our work has included setting out Autonomous Reef Monitoring Systems (aka ARMS), a series of PVC plates that look something like an underwater apartment block that marine fauna can settle on, crawl into, and hide under. Six months or a year later, these blocks are removed, and all the fauna is inventoried, some by visual identification, but mostly by molecular genetic methods. And as part of the Environment Ministry’s recently launched Long-Term Ecological Observatories Programme, a group of us will initiate monitoring of multiple marine ecosystems in the Andaman Islands.
In just 10 years, diving has gone from being a niche activity pursued by an intrepid few to an almost standard holiday pastime for many urban travellers. It has also become a pretty standard research option for the growing field of marine biology in India. But the trail was blazed by veterans of in-water research such as Rohan Arthur, Sarang Kulkarni, Naveen Namboothri (all coral reef biologists), Vardhan Patankar (reefs and reef fish) and Elrika D’ Souza (dugongs).
Diving is always a delight (except maybe in bad weather and cold water, but even then). The feeling of weightlessness, the illusion of grace (though some divers are truly dolphinesque), the sense of space, all make it soothing, even meditative. Even after hammering stakes into the ground, completing a transect against the current, or laying endless quadrats, you can let time stand still, neutrally buoyant in that space, surrounded by silence, and forget the world exists. And sometimes, after a night dive, suspended midwater during your safety stop, you twirl your arms and legs, so they light up in the water with luminescent algae, and make the stars dance with you. And feel zen for just a moment.
Finding Philautus: bush frogs of the Western Ghats
Originally published in Roundglass Sustain, March 2021. Click here for the visually appealing version.
About 20 years ago, I discovered the montane mosaic of sholas and grasslands in the Upper Nilgiris of the Western Ghats and decided to study vertebrate communities there for my PhD. Having worked before on olive ridley turtles on the Chennai coast, I naturally gravitated towards the herpetofaunal community. On my first visit, I saw plenty of spiny lizards (Salea horsfeildi), probably a vine snake or two (Ahaetulla perroteti) and maybe even a horseshoe pit viper (Trimeresurus strigatus).
But my main interest was in how diversity varied between small and large sholas — patches of montane evergreen forest surrounded by a sea of grassland. Building on Robert MacArthur and EO Wilson’s theory of island biogeography, which provided a framework for understanding species diversity on islands, many ecologists had started to study habitat “islands”. Since forest fragmentation had started to create such isolated patches of forests, such studies were believed to be important for conservation strategy. I was interested in groups of animals that had many species, such as forest frogs and shieldtail snakes.
I arrived in the Nilgiris in December 1992 and stayed at Avalanche, with photographer and filmmaker Saravanakumar, who was then a student working on a project mapping the sholas of the Upper Nilgiris. We stayed in a poorly insulated room and crawled under our blankets by 9 pm to avoid the cold. The days were spent trekking to the top of various hills to find suitable vantage points to map the landscape. While Sara marked sholas by the contours of the hills on topographical sheets (these were the days before GPS units), I searched for frogs and snakes.
Further along the road was Upper Bhavani, a little Electricity Board settlement beside a large dam, and the entry point to the southern section of Mukurthi National Park. I made this my base for the next several years. The Electricity Board allowed me to rent one of their staff houses, an old Inspection Bungalow (which meant my address was IB, EB, UB).
It was a barrel of fun, but I remained fascinated with bush frogs. They had loud, persistent calls, but were always hard to find, and harder to identify. Years later, when SP Vijayakumar joined my lab as a student in my first year as faculty at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), it would become his obsession and my vicarious pursuit. As part of his research, Vijay carried out fieldwork across the entire Western Ghats, literally climbing every mountain to sample these frogs. He proposed theories about the evolution of these frogs in the Western Ghats, highlighting the role of both geological and geographic processes. Typically, frogs isolated on mountain tops diverged from each other resulting in new species that looked similar but were genetically very different. He also described nine new species of bush frogs.
Twenty-five years after I encountered my first Philautus, the genus, now called Raorchestes, is the centrepiece of our work on the ecology and evolutionary biogeography of the Western Ghats, at IISc. Along the way, Philautus Frog would also embark on an adventure to find the Big Sea in a children’s story I wrote.
Our work at IISc extends to other genera of frogs, but also lizards and snakes. Over the next decade, many students and researchers have studied these groups using a suite of tools including extensive field studies, ecological modelling, and molecular genetic analysis. Across all the studies, we found fascinating patterns. The Palghat Gap is a low mountain pass between the Anamalais and the Nilgiris, at an average elevation of just 140 m. This gap, already known as a barrier to the dispersal of species on short time scales, was also found to separate taxa across millions of years. For example, the northern and southern clades (groups of related species) of bush frogs separated from each other more than 15 million years ago. The southern Western Ghats proved to be a particularly rich repository of species, including several deeply divergent frogs, lizards, and snakes, many of which we described as new species or even genera. We believe that the region may have served as a refugium during the Pleistocene glaciations, when other parts of the ghats and peninsular India were not habitable.
Over the years, we have studied evolutionary history to understand how species originate and diversify, and how this leads to the patterns of endemism and diversity we see. French biologist and historian, Jean Rostand’s oft repeated quote “Theories pass. The frog remains,” is an endorsement of the persistence of facts. But one could interpret that differently. As much as we have learned about ecology and evolution, perhaps the frog always has more to teach us.
About 20 years ago, I discovered the montane mosaic of sholas and grasslands in the Upper Nilgiris of the Western Ghats and decided to study vertebrate communities there for my PhD. Having worked before on olive ridley turtles on the Chennai coast, I naturally gravitated towards the herpetofaunal community. On my first visit, I saw plenty of spiny lizards (Salea horsfeildi), probably a vine snake or two (Ahaetulla perroteti) and maybe even a horseshoe pit viper (Trimeresurus strigatus).
But my main interest was in how diversity varied between small and large sholas — patches of montane evergreen forest surrounded by a sea of grassland. Building on Robert MacArthur and EO Wilson’s theory of island biogeography, which provided a framework for understanding species diversity on islands, many ecologists had started to study habitat “islands”. Since forest fragmentation had started to create such isolated patches of forests, such studies were believed to be important for conservation strategy. I was interested in groups of animals that had many species, such as forest frogs and shieldtail snakes.
I arrived in the Nilgiris in December 1992 and stayed at Avalanche, with photographer and filmmaker Saravanakumar, who was then a student working on a project mapping the sholas of the Upper Nilgiris. We stayed in a poorly insulated room and crawled under our blankets by 9 pm to avoid the cold. The days were spent trekking to the top of various hills to find suitable vantage points to map the landscape. While Sara marked sholas by the contours of the hills on topographical sheets (these were the days before GPS units), I searched for frogs and snakes.
Further along the road was Upper Bhavani, a little Electricity Board settlement beside a large dam, and the entry point to the southern section of Mukurthi National Park. I made this my base for the next several years. The Electricity Board allowed me to rent one of their staff houses, an old Inspection Bungalow (which meant my address was IB, EB, UB).
It was a barrel of fun, but I remained fascinated with bush frogs. They had loud, persistent calls, but were always hard to find, and harder to identify. Years later, when SP Vijayakumar joined my lab as a student in my first year as faculty at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), it would become his obsession and my vicarious pursuit. As part of his research, Vijay carried out fieldwork across the entire Western Ghats, literally climbing every mountain to sample these frogs. He proposed theories about the evolution of these frogs in the Western Ghats, highlighting the role of both geological and geographic processes. Typically, frogs isolated on mountain tops diverged from each other resulting in new species that looked similar but were genetically very different. He also described nine new species of bush frogs.
Twenty-five years after I encountered my first Philautus, the genus, now called Raorchestes, is the centrepiece of our work on the ecology and evolutionary biogeography of the Western Ghats, at IISc. Along the way, Philautus Frog would also embark on an adventure to find the Big Sea in a children’s story I wrote.
Our work at IISc extends to other genera of frogs, but also lizards and snakes. Over the next decade, many students and researchers have studied these groups using a suite of tools including extensive field studies, ecological modelling, and molecular genetic analysis. Across all the studies, we found fascinating patterns. The Palghat Gap is a low mountain pass between the Anamalais and the Nilgiris, at an average elevation of just 140 m. This gap, already known as a barrier to the dispersal of species on short time scales, was also found to separate taxa across millions of years. For example, the northern and southern clades (groups of related species) of bush frogs separated from each other more than 15 million years ago. The southern Western Ghats proved to be a particularly rich repository of species, including several deeply divergent frogs, lizards, and snakes, many of which we described as new species or even genera. We believe that the region may have served as a refugium during the Pleistocene glaciations, when other parts of the ghats and peninsular India were not habitable.
Over the years, we have studied evolutionary history to understand how species originate and diversify, and how this leads to the patterns of endemism and diversity we see. French biologist and historian, Jean Rostand’s oft repeated quote “Theories pass. The frog remains,” is an endorsement of the persistence of facts. But one could interpret that differently. As much as we have learned about ecology and evolution, perhaps the frog always has more to teach us.
