Researchers set out to understand how the island’s biodiversity might have been influenced by its shared geological history with India, by studying the evolutionary history of the common house gecko and its close relatives in India and Sri Lanka.

A team of researchers from the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in India led by Dr. P.V. Shivaprasad wondered whether another type of molecular regulator, named microRNAs, also contributed to the domestication of rice. We hope that our finding promotes future research to identify other changes associated with domestication of plants, spearheading further improvement in crops for the future," states Dr. Shivaprasad.
 

Eric Carl, in his much-loved children's book, "The Very Hungry Caterpillar", takes us through the transformation of a gluttony caterpillar into a beautiful butterfly. For a scientist, however, this book is a Pandora's box of questions. How does the caterpillar know when to stop eating? Had he not eaten so much, would he have ever moved on into the cocoon?

Kiran Marathe, a young 20-something researcher from the National Centre of Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bengaluru, works on one of India’s most under-studied species of insects — the cicadas. Two new species of cicadas have been discovered in the Western Ghats, one in Goa and the other in the Kodagu district of Karnataka.

A team of geneticists, conservation biologists and wildlife officials are in the process of preparing a genetic map — that is, tracing out the sequence of genes — from Machhli’s DNA, which was extracted at the time of her death. Dr. Uma Ramakrishnan, at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bengaluru, is leading Machhli’s genome analysis.

A new study shows bats love a caffeine kick just as much as we do. The study authored by Shasank Ongole and Dr. Mahesh Sankaran from the National Centre for Biological Sciences in collaboration with CWS Scientist Krithi K Karanth finds that bats, in fact, love shade-grown coffee.

Shade-grown coffee serves as an important commuting route for bats and if properly managed, these coffee plantations can have significant ecological value for bats, a new study has said.

It is believed that exaggerated response to bad memories is similar for all negative memories. A team of Indian scientists, namely, Mohammed Mostafizur Rahman, Ashutosh Shukla and Sumantra Chattarji from the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) and Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine (inSTEM) have shown that exaggerated response and difficulty to get rid of bad memories could depend on whether the bad memory was formed before or after a stressful event.

31^st August 2018 saw the second iteration of Student Presentations on Ecology, Environment & Conservation—or SPEEC-UP as it is aptly named—one-day conference with three-minute talks by budding young scientists.

Sumantra Chattarji, professor of neurobiology at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bengaluru, says, “Even a month of social interactions, playtime, exercise, and sensory stimulation can make a two-month-old rat a better learner.” Other studies by Chattarji and his team of researchers have found that if these young rats are stressed for ten days, they lose those connections in the hippocampus.