A new era of Indian ecology looks towards its horizons and land

Wildlife ecology in India looks different today than it did a decade ago. Climate change, habitat fragmentation, invasive species, and rapid evolution are all reshaping ecosystems faster than scholars realize. Thus, ecologists are interested in how biodiversity has changed as well as how it is likely to change further.

These are just the questions that shaped the second Indian Wildlife Ecology Conference (IWEC) at Ashoka University in Sonipat, Haryana, on 10-12 July, where researchers from across India came together to discuss the future of wildlife ecology in the country. Conceived by the late wildlife biologist Ajit Kumar as a national forum for India’s wildlife ecologists to exchange ideas, IWEC has evolved into a platform where researchers from universities, government agencies, NGOs and field stations come together to explore where the discipline is headed – using insights in evolutionary history, long-term monitoring, public policy, technology and public health.

inaugural conferenceThe conference, held in 2024, demonstrated the breadth of this community. At the second conference this year, participants returned again and again to the same question: How can ecologists predict ecological change? As Indian ecology reaches toward prediction across biological scales, disciplines, and even the divide between science and policy, much of that ambition still depends on staying close to the ground, fieldwork, and local institutions.

biodiversity at scale

The conference’s three paired plenary sessions showcased how wildlife ecology is expanding to the biological scale, taking into account evolutionary history, ecosystem change, bird conservation, citizen science, and animal physiology. The key point was that predicting the future requires evidence from both the deep past and the decisions animals make every day to survive.

The inaugural session explored biodiversity through deep evolutionary time. Jhanvi Joshi (CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad) explained how geological history and climate change shaped the diversity of woody plants in the Western Ghats. Using phylogenetic analyses, they investigated whether different parts of a mountain range act as evolutionary ‘cradles’, where new species arise, or ‘museums’, where ancient lineages persist. They argued that both patterns could help predict how species will respond to future environmental change.

Mahesh Sankaran (National Center for Biological Sciences, Bengaluru) turns to the future of India’s montane grasslands under climate change, based on projections from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to show how rising temperatures, increasingly variable rainfall and extreme weather will reshape these already vulnerable ecosystems, alongside other human-driven pressures such as altered nutrient cycles and land-use change.

Evolutionary history has set the stage and long-term monitoring today is tracking how biodiversity is changing. Ashwin Vishwanathan (Nature Conservation Foundation, Mysore) talked about citizen-science platforms like eBird India, which generate observations at a scale impossible in traditional field studies, helping researchers track migration and distribution of species. Their example of choice was the rusty-tailed flycatcher, which migration researchers in Uttarakhand and eastern India reconstructed using citizen-science data.

Asad Rahmani (Bombay Natural History Society) – who is surveying pressures such as habitat loss, infrastructure and climate change on the country’s birds – pointed to the drying up of Kashmir’s Shalbugh wetlands and urged scientists and citizens to speak up for wildlife. Anusha Shankar (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Hyderabad) described physiology as an underutilized lens that connects processes at the biological scale, based on energy expenditure and body temperature measurements in hummingbirds.

Maria Thakar (Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru) similarly studied the spiny-tailed lizard to show how desert reptiles regulate body temperature and adjust their nutritional needs across different seasons. “Lizards, like other ectothermic vertebrates, can thermoregulate behaviorally, but will not be able to handle future climate warming,” she said.

Rather than simply recording where species are found, researchers are increasingly trying to understand the mechanisms that determine how organisms and ecosystems respond to environmental change. The emphasis is moving from description to prediction. Yet every one of these forecasting tools, ranging from physical measurements to citizen-science records, is based on long, even arduous, periods of observation.

understanding action

However, scientific understanding alone cannot conserve biodiversity. A special session, called ‘Leveraging global policies for local conservation in India’, focused on how ecological knowledge can help decision-making in India, while acknowledging that conservation everywhere is shaped by the interplay of science, governance and society. The discussion moderated by Asmita Kabra (Ashoka University) asked how international biodiversity commitments can be adapted to suit India’s ecological and social realities. Its speakers agreed that global frameworks are only successful where local institutions and evidence-based implementation support them.

In particular, Jagadish Krishnaswamy (Indian Institute for Human Settlements, Bengaluru) called on experts to move beyond species-focused conservation to protecting the ecological processes that sustain entire landscapes. Following the success of India’s protected areas, he argued that the next frontier is to conserve landscapes beyond its boundaries and integrate biodiversity, livelihoods and climate resilience.

Vivek Menon (Wildlife Trust of India) said that species-focused conservation is inevitable because “the natural world sustains us, but we are losing the species that sustain it”. He said that although conservation cannot completely stop biodiversity loss, it “substantially reduces how fast it happens”.

International agreements can provide a general framework, argued Menon and Krishnaswamy, but sustainable conservation depends on effective local institutions and communities that share these landscapes with wildlife. In other words, both predictions and commitments are only as effective as the institutions and communities that can act on them.

spider silk on air

While the plenary session highlighted what wildlife ecologists are studying, the conference panel discussion noted how the discipline itself is changing. Advances in artificial intelligence, genomics, environmental DNA, and computational tools are transforming ecology research, allowing scientists to ask questions that were difficult or even impossible a decade ago. Yet speakers throughout the conference also cautioned against viewing technology as a replacement for ecological understanding.

In a discussion titled ‘Extinction of Experience: The Decline of Field-Based Ecology’, moderated by Robin Vijayan (Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Tirupati), panelists discussed how ecology is adapting to rapid advances in artificial intelligence and genetics. The panel said that these tools have expanded the scope of ecological research, but cannot be a substitute for the understanding that comes from direct engagement with nature. Bilal Habib (Wildlife Institute of India) said, “Unless we have field logic, we will not be able to analyze our data well.”

Another panel examined the complex issue of free-ranging dogs through the intersecting lenses of ecology, public health, animal welfare, and urban governance. And rather than advocating any single approach, the discussion laid out the scientific and policy challenges of managing free-ranging dog populations in Indian cities and their fringes.

Panelists also considered how terminology shaped public discussion. Chandrima Home (Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bengaluru) argued that the label “independent dogs” more accurately captured these populations than “stray” or “feral”, as only a small portion come into conflict with wildlife or livestock. Other speakers discussed the need for improved waste management and stronger municipal governance, as well as the role of animal birth control programs, arguing that dog populations track food availability as closely as any carnivore in the wild does. As Anindita Bhadra (IISER Kolkata) said, “We want our cities to be smart, but we cannot manage our waste.”

In fact, both made the same case from opposite directions: technology cannot replace field logic and a problem like free dogs cannot be solved by ecology alone.

across disciplines

The conference’s parallel symposium furthered this scope of inquiry as researchers also presented work on river ecosystems, disease ecology, bats, insects, behavioral ecology, environmental DNA, wildlife corridors and conservation technologies, depicting ecology in interaction through genetics, physiology, epidemiology and social sciences.

Sara Kamat, a PhD scholar at Bharati Vidyapeeth (Deemed-to-be University), Pune, has used advanced molecular methods to explore how seasonal changes in diet shape the gut microbiome of Indian gray wolves, providing insight into how carnivores survive in a changing environment. Swapnil Kiran (CSIR-CCMB Hyderabad) talked about his work on measuring the economic burden of mortality and morbidity from snakebite in rural India using a community-based ecological epidemiology approach. Sibasish Sahu (Amity University, Noida) has documented how Asian elephants change their behavior in the mining landscape of Keonjhar, Odisha to navigate increasingly fragmented habitats using a mix of field-based, spatial and analytical ecological methods. The work of the three researchers is a reminder of how broad the scope of ecological methods is today.

Overall, over three days and 197 talks, Throughline described a discipline that has become ambitious — notably more integrated and more willing to talk policy and public health — even as it remains, at its core, grassroots science. In a special address, Rohini Nilekani, philanthropist and one of the conference sponsors, compared wildlife ecologists to the wind that carries the spider’s silk, allowing it to build a web that would otherwise be impossible to build. Similarly, individual conservation threads become meaningful only when they connect.

Ankita Rathore is a science communicator and writer whose work focuses on science and technology policy, research, and higher education.