Ashwin Warudkar
Ph.D STUDENT
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RESEARCH INTERESTS
My thriving in this field is driven by the concepts of evolutionary biology, historical biogeography and functional ecology. I follow keeping a broad interest in the pattern and processes while the taxon groups may change according to their fit in the system. I am naturally inclined towards isolated lands which are ideal systems to test ecological and evolutionary patterns depending on their nature being physically isolated oceanic islands, river islands or habitat-climatically isolated sky islands. I initially studied spider diversity and community ecology and explored spider communities in the Central Nicobar Islands for my masters. Subsequently, I worked on the South Asian River Dolphin in the river Brahmaputra where I also explored river islands and how the seasonal flooding governs the riverine wet grassland bird community. Keeping the islands constant, I am currently working on the biogeography and landscape ecology of the Host-Parasite relationship of Avian Malaria in the sky islands of the western ghats. The Avian Haemosporidian parasites are known to cause infections to wild birds and are transmitted through the dipteran vectors as intermediate hosts. I am interested in understanding the evolutionary setting of the host-parasite relationship between the sky island endemic bird lineages with a divergence history across the sky islands and their malarial parasites. I am also keen to understand the impact of recent landscape change and climate change on the spread of avian malaria among the sky island bird community Projects Involved: Avian Malaria PERSONAL AND OTHER INTERESTS
Apart from the ecology, I enjoy watching Anime, reading Manga. I sing when jamming. I like to go on unplanned hiking trips and often end up collecting different rocks from different places (especially quartz!). When I rarely sit down to read, I tend to choose thrillers and fiction stories. The same interest is reflected when watching movies or series. Regarding fiction, I am a DC person more than MARVEL! |
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PUBLICATIONS
- Warudkar, A., Goyal, N., Kher, V., Vinay, K. L., Chanda, R., Bandi, R. S., Jenkins, C. N., Robin, V. V., & Pimm, S. L. (2022). Using the area of habitat to assess the extent of protection of India's birds. Biotropica, 00, 1– 14. https://doi.org/10.1111/btp.13132
- Warudkar, A., Pandey, D.V., Narwade S.S. (2019). Sightings of Bengal Florican Houbaropsis bengalensis on the chapories of the Lohit River, Assam, India. Birding ASIA, 31: 43–45.
- Gaikwad, S., Warudkar, A., & Shouche, Y. (2017). Efficacy of DNA barcoding for the species identification of spiders from Western Ghats of India. Mitochondrial DNA Part A, 28(5): 638–644.
- Nerlekar A., A. Warudkar, G. Gowande, S. Salve, A. Raut, S. Patankar and S. Nalavade (2016): A review of the faunal diversity of the Fergusson College campus, Pune, India. ZOO’s PRINT, 31(10): 4–25.
- Warudkar, A. (2013). Individual male Argiope sp. (Audouin, 1826) shows replacement between two types of stabilimenta. Indian Journal of Arachnology 2(2): 39–41
