The structure of the vegetation determines the foraging areas and resources available to birds. It also provides protection from predation.

The caterpillar of the swallowtail butterflies changes its appearance and colour at various stages of its elaborate life cycle, to escape predators. But, how exactly do they do this? A new study by researchers, Nikkil Gaitonde, Janhavi Joshi and Krushnamegh Kunte at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bengaluru, answers some of these questions. The study was published in the journal Ecology and Evolution.

    For insects, flying is a swift way of getting around to find food, identify a mate and escape unfavourable conditions. While muscles provide the power for flying, it is the brain that coordinates strategic planning. For a hungry fly, this could mean using its powerful olfaction to sense the presence of food such as a rotten banana and then navigating the distance to reach it, which may require flying for several minutes or even an hour or more. How does the insect brain coordinate the timing for such long flight bouts?

The researcher, Zeeshan Mirza, has named his latest find, a ground-dwelling gecko that he found in northern Karnataka, the Hemidactylus vijayraghavani after the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Modi government, K. VijayRaghavan.

Mandran and NCBS (National Centre for Biological Sciences) have put together Jigyasa event for 2018, themed on Traditional Knowledge meets Modern Science. The event starts at 9.30 am on December 15, 2018 at the Dasheri Hall in the NCBS campus in Kodigehalli, Bangalore.

In a series of collaborative studies, researchers from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bengaluru; Villanova University, USA; and the Natural History Museum (NHM), London, have discovered eight new species of bent-toed geckos from Northeast India.

We are made up of trillions of cells and they use endocytosis to take up nutrients and growth factors. Endocytosis is a process by which a cell makes small vesicles or bags to take in nutrients from outside environment. In order to maintain its shape and size, a cell has to maintain the area of its plasma membrane.

In a recent study, Mr Joseph Thottacherry of NCBS, along with his collaborators from other Indian and Spanish institutes, has tried to understand how cells maintain their shapes in spite of expelling material from their membrane.