Across the world, mountains harbour high biodiversity. This is thought to be because of the array of habitats that exist along the mountain slope. But could the structure of mountain range, its ups and downs contribute to driving biodiversity? It was these questions that the group led by Uma Ramakrishnan set out to answer. Focussing on the Western Ghats, a global biodiversity hotspot and home to high elevation songbirds, a paper published today in the Proceedings of Royal Society B has found that birds living in high elevation peaks of the Western Ghats of southern India are affected by gaps in forest cover to different extents; deep valleys have greater impact than shallow ones along a mountain chain.