pRAVEEN
Posr Doc Researcher
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RESEARCH INTERESTS
I have long been fascinated by plants. For most of us, the initial appreciation of plants comes from the stunning beauty they bring to the world around us. My research interests stem from this appreciation and the curiosity to understand the remarkable diversity of the plant world; the processes that have created it, and the ways in which they adapt to an ever-changing world. Through the lens of evolutionary biology, I seek to gain a better understanding of these patterns and processes. Plants can’t ‘run’ away from their problems! So they have evolved to adapt to them in ingenious ways. I aspire to study such mechanisms, especially the genetic changes underlying adaptations, from changes in a single nucleotide to the addition of an entire set of chromosomes (polyploidy), and how they play out in the ecological context. During my PhD, I studied a remarkably resilient alien invasive plant, Lantana camara, exploring whether different flower colour types, historically thought to be different species, are indeed distinct species, and how diverse they are in terms of their ploidy. I am now expanding my research from a single species perspective to an ecosystem context. I study the Sola-grassland mosaic of the Western Ghats in India, a remarkable montane ecosystem, with high levels of endemism. Forests and grasslands are known to show changes in their distributions in response to fluctuations in the global climate in the glacial-interglacial cycles. I am trying to understand how this unique mosaic of forest and grassland has responded to such environmental fluctuations in the past. I use genomics as a tool to understand the evolutionary and demographic dynamics of plants that inhabit this habitat. PERSONAL AND OTHER INTERESTS
Outside of my research, I enjoy a range of things. Painting is my favourite hobby, and I find it quite meditative. I also enjoy gardening and fishkeeping. In my free time, I love travelling and exploring the world around me. 
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PUBLICATIONS (* mentees)
Peer-reviewed
Peer-reviewed
- Vinay, K. L., Arvind, C., Goyal, N., & Robin, V. V. (2025). High-quality genome assembly of the endemic, threatened, White-bellied Sholakili Sholicola albiventris (Muscicapidae: Blanford, 1868) from the Shola Sky Islands, India. Journal of Heredity, esaf049. https://doi.org/10.1093/jhered/esaf049
- Arvind, C., Joshi, V., Charif, R., Jeganathan, P., & Robin, V. (2022). Species detection framework using automated recording units: A case study of the Critically Endangered Jerdon's courser. Oryx, 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605321000995
- Sawant, S.*, Arvind, C., Joshi, V., & Robin, V. V. (2022). Spectrogram cross-correlation can be used to measure the complexity of bird vocalizations. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 00, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.13765
- Sarangi M, Ganguly P, Zenia, Arvind C, Lakshman A, Vidya TNC. (2014). Common Myna roosts are not recruitment centres. PloS One 9: e103406. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0103406
