VIBHAV
Ph.D. Student
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RESEARCH INTERESTS
I always loved birds - the organisms that sing, fly, and have vibrant colors! I got my first set of binoculars when I was 12 years old. I used to spend hours and hours looking at the backyard birds. In the summers, when I used to go to my village, I explored the rural areas of Maharashtra (Deccan Plateau). These so-called excursions made me wonder, “Why” do birds have such vibrant colours? What's with the diversity of songs they sing? The “colour” part always bugged me (maybe because I’m partially colour blind :p) After joining Birdlab, I got an opportunity to understand these questions and answer them. Birdlab nurtured my skills as an ecologist and gave me an opportunity to work in bioacoustics, landscape ecology, biogeography, and genomics. I also got an exposure to mist netting, vegetation surveys, bird identification, and bird handling. Currently, my research interests lie in Plumage and Genomic studies. I look at the genetic basis of colours and have worked with UV photographs. I use MicaToolbox and Fiji (ImageJ) to run these plumage analyses. Use various pipelines and tools to do genomics and phylogenetic studies. Even though birds have fascinated me, I have kept an open mind to look at the ecosystem as a whole and not look at it from a “bird’s eye view”! PERSONAL AND OTHER INTERESTS
Other than birds, ecology, and trekking, my other interests include spending hours with my bass guitar, ukelele and mouth organ. I also love to read about rock history. I’m also learning some music theory, and I have learnt enough to nerd people out :) My favourite activity to pass the time is to put on some Pinkfloyd and go into a deep slumber. 
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