NEWS FROM BIODIVERSITY LAB | Biodiversity Lab

2021/10/30: Our past PhD student Dr. Riddhi Deshmukh received the 2021 Zita Lobo Memorial Award for the Best PhD Thesis in Biological and Chemical Sciences at TIFR. Congratulations, Riddhi, and continue to shine! Read more on the TIFR website.
2021/01/02: Butterflies of Bengaluru book is now available for purchase. Read about the book and download sample pages here.
2020/12: Riddhi Deshmukh defended her PhD thesis. Congralutions, newly minted Dr! We are certain that she will continue to do well in the future.
2020/08: Vaishali's paper on dispersal and migration in butterflies is out in Biology Letters. Congratulations on a nice paper!
2020/07/14: Our latest on the genetics of butterfly adaptations: molecular evolution of melanin pathway genes in Lepidoptera. Congratulations to Muktai on her first research paper, and to Riddhi on her nth!
2020/06/30: PhD student Dipendra Nath Basu published a very cool paper on the mechanisms that sustain very strange caterpillar-ant associations. Read a popular article about these findings on NCBS News. Congratulations, Dipendra, on a remarkable paper!
2020/01/12: Happy about our nine journal covers that feature the work of Biodiversity Lab and collaborators over the past 13 years. The latest is the review of Indian Tarucus butterflies by the PhD student Dipendra Nath Basu and collaborators in Trop. Lep. Res.
2019/12/11: Students from the Entomology Dept. of Kolhapur's Shivaji Univ. visited the Biodiversity Lab and the Research Collections at NCBS.
2019/11/21: A chapter from the lab in a recent book, "Indian Insects: Diversity and Science", lays out a roadmap for Indian lepidopterists after decades of neglect of taxonomy, systematics, and evolutionary biology in the study of butterflies in the country.
2019/05/09: Congratulations to PhD students Saurav Baral and Riddhi Deshmukh, and post-doc Gandhimathi, on their first paper on doublesex, a master regulator of insect polymorphisms. Way to go, Saurav, Gandhimathi and Riddhi!
2018/12/14: PhD student Dhanashree Lakhe received the Best Poster Presentation Award at the 2018 conference of the Indian Society of Developmental Biology. PhD student Vaishali Bhaumik was Runner-up for the Best Speaker (Ecology and Evolution) at the SPEEC-UP student conference Bangalore 2018. Congratulations!
2018/06/26: Krushnamegh was tenured and promoted to Associate Professor at TIFR. Our lab will be around a little longer!
2018/03/27: Our Am Nat paper on the evolutionary assembly of mimicry rings won the American Society of Naturalists' 2018 Presidential Award, "honoring an outstanding article published in The American Naturalist in the previous year". Yay!
2017/11/03: PhD student Vaishali Bhaumik receives the NatureMates Young Biologist Award for 2017. Congratulations, Vaishali!
2017/11/01: We conducted the first NCBS Biodiversity Marathon at JP Nagar Reserve Forest in Bengaluru. Read more on the event's Facebook page.
2017/09/18: Congratulations to PhD student Vaishali Bhaumik on her first paper on danaine migrations in southern India, published recently in Oikos. Also see the press release related to this paper.
2017/09/18: Congratulations to PhD students Riddhi Deshmukh and Saurav Baral on their first paper (which is also an awesome synthesis) on the developmental genetics of mimicry in butterflies, published recently in WIREs Developmental Biology. Also see the press release related to this paper.
2017/08: Our lab and associates have discovered nearly a dozen new species this year. See the growing list of new species on the websites of our lab or the NCBS Research Collections.
2017/07: Our TREE paper on adaptive genetic exchange has a Faculty of 1000 recommendation!
2017/02: Our lab and close collaborators are in the news! See coverage in the Hindustan Times, the Indian Express, The Telegraph, India, and EurekAlert.
2017/02: Our second paper on the evolution and diversification of mimicry complexes in the butterflies of the Western Ghats is published in the American Naturalist. Also see the first paper in Evolution.
2016/11-12: The Genetics of Adaptation symposium, co-organized by Krushnamegh Kunte, Deepa Agashe and Gaiti Hasan at NCBS, attracted a very good response from contributors and students. Check out the lineup of speakers for the symposium and the schedule here.
2016/02: Varad Giri, currently a post-doc in the lab and the Curator of Herpetology at NCBS, received the prestigious Sanctuary Asia Wildlife Service Award. Congratulations, Varad! Read the NCBS News story about Varad's award.
2016/01: Athulya Girish K. and Bhavya Dharmaraaj joined the lab as NCBS PhD students. Welcome to the lab, Athulya and Bhavya!
2015/10-11: The Biodiversity Lab graduated its first PhD student! Shiyu Su, who was co-advised by Krushnamegh Kunte at NCBS and Matthew Lim at the National University of Singapore, defended her PhD thesis in October. She received the degree with a bang – a cover story in Evolution on colour pattern evolution and mimetic resemblance in butterflies! Shiyu, congratulations on the cool story, and best luck with the future work!! See popular science coverage of Shiyu's paper in PhysOrg, EurekAlert, The Hindu, The Statesman, and NCBS News, among others, or see her paper.
2015/05-07: We finished a very successful field trip to the Eaglenest WLS and Pakke Tiger Reserve in Western Arunachal Pradesh. Lots of exciting butterflies and other insects! They will start to help us with various mimicry and other projects in coming months and years. We are also looking forward to establishing a field station at Eaglenest in collaboration with IISER Pune.
2015/06: We described a new species of butterfly, Hypolycaena narada, from Arunachal Pradesh. This is our first butterfly species description. Makes us think how many more new species still remain to be discovered and named in India ;). Read the original research paper, a press release about this discovery, or its popular science coverage in The Hindu, The Telegraph, National Geographic Traveller India and Times of India, among many others.
2015/06: Our paper on the molecular phylogeny and systematics of the Oriental Nawab butterflies, Charaxes(Polyura), is published in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution.
2015/05: Krushnamegh Kunte, along with Dr. Deepa Agashe, edited a special section on evolutionary biology in the May 2015 issue of the journal Current Science.
2015/04: We described, with Kiran C.G. and Kalesh S., a new species of damselfly, Protosticta ponmudiensis, from Kerala. Our first new species, we are excited! Read the news story in the New Indian Express, or the original paper.
2015/03/15: The Hindu reported that a butterfly species, the Green-banded Peacock (Papilio palinurus), has been reported in India for the first time, adding to the already rich butterfly fauna of the country. Biodiversity Lab helped make the discovery.
2015/02: Varad Giri joined NCBS, making our taxonomy and herpetology community stronger. He will be working in the NCBS Collections Facility. Welcome Varad!
2015/01: Riddhi Deshmukh and Saurav Baral joined Lab 8 as graduate students. Welcome Riddhi and Saurav!
2014/07/30: The Deccan Herald newspaper published a news story on the decline of butterfly populations in the Bengaluru urban area, highlighting our work.
2014/03/06: doublesex is a mimicry supergene, we reported in Nature. Read more about this story, or see popular science coverage of this paper in Nature, Nature India, Science, NCBS News, The Scientist, National Geographic's Phenomena blog, Mongabay, New York Times, The Hindu, and ScienceDaily.
2014/01: Our book on butterflies and moths of the Pakke Tiger Reserve has been published.
2013/08: Social angles of biodiversity conservation in developing countries such as India were highlighted in our two papers in Biodiversity Conservation, and Science.
2013/06: Our second paper on speciation and hybridization in tiger swallowtail butterflies was published in Genome Biology and Evolution.
2013/04: Our book, Butterflies of the Garo Hills, was published by Samrakshan Trust (New Delhi), Titli Trust (Dehradun) and Indian Foundation for Butterflies (Bengaluru). Two of the Biodiversity Lab members, Krushnamegh Kunte and Gaurav Agavekar, among others, are authors of this book.
2012/12: Krushnamegh Kunte was invited to become a member of the IUCN Species Survival Commission South Asian Invertebrate Specialist Group. His membership of the group will be from 2013-2016. He will help IUCN/SSC assess conservation status of endemic, rare and legally protected butterflies of India, and study extinction risks of these butterflies to design conservation strategies for Indian butterflies.
2012/12: Earlier this month some of our lab members participated in the butterfly survey organized by the Travancore Natural History Society at Neyyar and Peppara WLS in southern Kerala. The highlight of the survey was the discovery of Ypthima striata, the very rare and Western Ghats endemic Striated Five-ring butterfly, from Neyyar WLS. The species was previously known only from the Nilgiris, approx. 600 km north of Neyyar. The Hindu featured the butterfly survey and the discovery of Ypthima striata.
2012/08: Brainwave, a children's science magazine, interviewed Krushnamegh Kunte about his genetic work on butterflies. Also interviewed in the same issue was another NCBS faculty member, Prof. Gaiti Hasan.
2012/03: Forbes India magazine interviewed Krushnamegh Kunte regarding his return to India to take up a faculty position at NCBS.
2012/01/02: Krushnamegh Kunte joined NCBS as a faculty member. The Biodiversity Lab kicks off!
2011/12: Krushnamegh Kunte received the Ramanujan Fellowship from the Dept. of Science and Technology, Govt. of India. The fellowships are highly competitive and "... meant for brilliant scientists and engineers from all over the world to take up scientific research positions in India, especially those scientists who want to return to India from abroad."
2011/10/13: The Daily Campus newspaper from the University of Connecticut, Storrs, USA, covered a story about Krushnamegh Kunte's work on mimicry following his talk at the Dept. of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Read the story online.
2011/09/09: Our paper on hybrid speciation in tiger swallowtail butterflies was published in PLoS Genetics. The story was covered by the National Science Foundation (USA), University of Texas at Austin, Harvard Gazette, and MSNBC. Read more about this work ...
2011/07/1-15: Down to Earth interviewed Krushnamegh Kunte about butterfly diversity and conservation in India.
2011/06: News of Krushnamegh Kunte's recent butterfly survey in Sikkim, Eastern Himalaya, appeared in The Hindu, The Telegraph (Kolkata), and the Navhind Times (Goa).
2010/11/01: Krushnamegh Kunte featured in an article in The Hindu about the 3rd Asian Lepidoptera Conservation Symposium.