IWE26: Indian Wildlife Ecology Conference 2026
IWE26: Indian Wildlife Ecology Conference 2026


Symposium topics
(IWEC) 2026
Please click the symposium name
to view the description.

IWE26: Indian Wildlife Ecology Conference 2026

Symposium Topics
(IWEC) 2026

Please click the symposium name to view the description.

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  • Ghazala Shahabuddin, Ashoka University
  • Meghna Krishnadas, National Centre for Biological Sciences-TIFR

    Globally, a large proportion of forests and open natural ecosystems are considered to be degraded. Ecosystem degradation is known to be caused by over-exploitation, biological invasions, climate change and fragmentation processes which have become pervasive in the Anthropocene. Despite the large spatial extent of degradation on ground, its detection and quantitative estimation remain difficult and the consequences of degradation for ecosystem functions still remain understudied. In this symposium, we will invite papers to showcase work, and stimulate discussion on new methodologies of detection and measurement of ecosystem degradation, as well as implications for ecosystem functions. We will make a special effort to solicit papers from early career ecologists from understudied ecosystems, and to ensure diversity of gender and under-represented communities and regions across India. This symposium will be helpful in delineating the policy-level implications of degradation, such as for climate change mitigation, biodiversity conservation and forest cover monitoring. We will design the session over 140 minutes, but the specific format will be decided based on the abstracts that are received.

  • Maria Thaker, Indian Institute of Science
  • Ratna Ghosal, Ahmedabad University

    A curation of talks that describe the proximate mechanisms of behaviour in wild animals. These can include hormonal mediation, neural pathways, and genetics. We welcome talks that describe mechanistic correlates of behaviour in wild animals as well as experiments or manipulations that explicitly connect proximate mechanisms to behavioural outcomes.
  • Honnavalli N. Kumara, Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History (SACON), South India Centre of Wildlife Institute of India
  • Santanu Mahato, Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History (SACON), South India Centre of Wildlife Institute of India
  • Arijit Pal, Food and Land Use Coalition India

    This symposium aims to present a comprehensive, multidimensional synthesis of primate studies in India to engage more deeply with the complex and intertwined question oF conservation and coexistence, by integrating perspectives from multiple research domains, from population ecology to behavioural science, or from cognitive ecology to urban primate studies, and even to community-based conservation and beyond. India harbours one of the world’s highest diversities of non-human primates, many of which occupy landscapes undergoing rapid anthropogenic alterations. The sessions will examine distribution of primate populations drawing on case-based situation analyses of selected primate species in India, how they respond behaviourally and cognitively to habitat modification, and how the relationship is evolving between humans and nonhuman-primates in shared landscapes. The forum will include national- and regional-scale population assessments, long-term ecological monitoring, community-driven conservation initiatives, urban primate ecology, and experimental and mechanistic approaches that reveal adaptive behaviours underlying primate persistence in human-modified niche. Collectively, the symposium will bridge large-scale ecological patterns with fine-scale behavioural and cognitive processes while introducing an innovative, case-based perspective and conservation challenges in India. 
  • Swapna Nelaballi, Centre for Wildlife Studies
  • Sruthi Unnikrishnan, Centre for Wildlife Studies

    Socio-ecological systems are shaped by relationships between people, wildlife, and landscapes, and understanding this complexity often requires more than a single method or dataset. Mixed methods research combines qualitative and quantitative approaches to examine ecological patterns alongside the social and economic contexts that influence them. This symposium focuses on practical ways of integrating interviews, surveys, long-term ecological monitoring, behavioural observations, and statistical analyses in socio-ecological research.

    The session brings together researchers and practitioners working across ecology and conservation. Using case studies from tropical landscapes, speakers will show how combining approaches reveals patterns missed by single methods. For example, pairing community interviews with behavioural data can explain why certain forms of human-wildlife interaction persist.
    Linking household level socio-economic information with ecological indicators can also clarify why conservation outcomes vary across space. The symposium will also address challenges such as mismatched sampling scales, differing data structures, and disciplinary divides. Speakers will share strategies including early planning, collaborative design, and transparent integration of multiple data types, encouraging confident and careful use of mixed methods in complex socio-ecological systems.


  • Nishant Kumar, National Centre for Biological Science-TIFR; Thinkpaws Foundation; University of Oxford
  • Priyanka Justa, Wildlife Institute of India and Neeraj Mahar, Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun
  • Yavdendradev V. Jhala and Arjun Srivathsa, National Centre for Biological Science-TIFR

    Canids occupy a remarkable ecological spectrum, from apex predators in wilderness to commensal species in urban environments, yet remain understudied. The 21st century marks a critical epoch for Indian canids, necessitating rapid adaptation to an expanding “human niche.” This symposium explores the complex dynamics of canid–human coexistence across diverse Indian landscapes: wolves facing habitat degradation and genetic introgression from free-ranging dogs (FRD), while Asiatic wild dogs circumvent declining populations and disease transmission risks. Indian foxes and golden jackals demonstrate remarkable behavioural plasticity; divergent ecological trajectories amidst urbanisation and habitat modification. FRDs, now numbering in millions, pose conservation and public health challenges following contradictory Supreme Court directives.

    This session brings together researchers working across montane forests, grasslands, production lands and human-dominated landscapes to examine how canids respond to urbanisation’s distinct pressures. Historical context reveals resilience—jackals and dholes survived 20th-century culling campaigns—but contemporary challenges demand urgent scientific attention. Canine distemper transmission to Gir lions and immunoglobulin detection in tigers underscores interconnected threats. We also seek contributions that deconstruct these interactions to formulate a holistic One Health vision, ensuring that the future of India’s neglected carnivores is defined by scientific understanding rather than polarised conflict.

  • Mayank Kohli, National Centre for Biological Sciences-TIFR
  • Jayashree Ratnam, National Centre for Biological Sciences-TIFR
  • Mahesh Sankaran, National Centre for Biological Sciences-TIFR

    It is now widely acknowledged that open ecosystems such as grasslands, deserts and savannas across the tropics and especially in India remain at the margins of policy and research even though they host unique wildlife assemblages and form the backbone of a thriving pastoralist economy. As a result, grasslands face multiple threats from widespread anthropogenic changes as well as misdirected policy interventions such as afforestation, livestock-grazing bans and fire suppression. There is a need to scale up ecological research to advance our understanding of these open ecosystems and inform their management. This session aims to bring together cutting-edge research on fundamental and applied issues in grassland and savanna ecology from diverse perspectives and regions across the country. Research will span themes including a) role of herbivores, microbes, fire, and climate in regulating grassland structure and function, b) the impacts of environmental changes such as land-use change, climate change and plant invasions, and c) novel research themes at the intersection of multiple-disciplines (e.g., OneHealth). We invite speakers from diverse career stages and academic lineages, so as to bring together a diversity of perspectives, approaches and techniques. As such, it will provide a forum for an exchange of ideas and perspectives, and help foster new collaborations.

  • Sumeet Gulati, University of British Columbia

    Effective wildlife conservation requires insights beyond ecology. This panel brings together four researchers applying tools from economics, econometrics, and behavioral psychology to design and evaluate solutions for biodiversity protection. Despite its promise, economic analysis remains underutilized in conservation science (Dickman, 2011). Economic  reasoning helps us understand incentives, trade-offs, and human behavior—key drivers of conservation outcomes—while offering rigorous methods to assess policy effectiveness and efficiency. Expanding these tools into ecology enables evidence-based evaluation of widely used conservation strategies.  This session is a dynamic exchange between economists and wildlife ecologists. Panelists will present research on human–wildlife conflict, compensation schemes, the impact of government programs on tribal communities, and poaching. We aim to foster discussion on tools commonly used in both disciplines, pressing conservation issues in India, and available data for cross-disciplinary work. Attendees will gain fresh perspectives on integrating economic and behavioral approaches into conservation practice, sparking collaboration and innovative ideas to advance both fields.

  • Rohit Chakravarty, Nature Conservation Foundation
  • Baheerathan Murugavel, Kerala Forest Research Institute & Vaaval-Centre for Indian Bat Research on Ecosystem Sustainability
  • Melito Pinto, GITAM Visakhapatnam


    Description
    With 135 species, bats comprise India’s largest mammalian order, yet chiropterologists are outnumbered, with far fewer than one researcher per bat species. This is changing as a growing number of researchers delve into studies on bats, exploring unique sensory abilities like echolocation and probing human perceptions of non-charismatic animals. There is also a rising interest in investigating bat-borne zoonotic diseases, crucial for human health and coexistence with wildlife. This sets the stage for proposing a timely symposium on recent advances in bat research and conservation. Abstract submissions are anticipated on a broad spectrum of topics, including biogeography, behaviour and sensory ecology, prey-predator interactions, conservation issues such as urbanisation and wind energy, and ecosystem services. Over the past decade, women’s contributions to Indian bat research have peaked, a trend we also expect to reflect in the abstract submissions. The symposium aims to curate talks from across career stages to provide a platform for bat researchers to share and learn from each other’s diverse experiences, while also offering insights into studying nocturnal and elusive taxa for the wider ecological community.

  • Bindu Raghavan, Wildlife Trust of India 
  • Karthikeyan Vasudevan, Centre for Cellular & Molecular Biology

    The session on ‘Wildlife Disease and impact on Ecology and Conservation’ will focus on studies carried out in India on diseases in wildlife, their ecology (including theoretical epidemiological models), impact on wildlife populations and ecosystems, and potential relevance to One Health, wildlife conservation (in situ and ex situ). It will include original works conducted by the authors based on a hypothesis with evidence towards or against the same. Case studies of individual animals or studies that have merely screened samples with no clear impacts on wild animal populations shall not be considered. This session will consist of up to 6 presentations (max. 15 minutes for presentation plus 5 minutes Q&A per speaker- total 20 minutes per talk) with a  5-minute introductory session at the beginning of the symposium and a 15-minute overall discussion & synthesis session at the end of the symposium. If feasible, the studies (only previously unpublished data) could form part of a special issue/ topic to be published after peer-review in an appropriate journal.

  • Maitreya Sil, JAIN (Deemed-to-be University)
  • Aniruddha Datta-Roy, National Institute of Science Education and Research (NISER)

    In the last 20 years, our idea of where Indian biota originated and how they colonized the Indian subcontinent has been completely reshaped by the advent of molecular phylogenetic and statistical tools. However, we still do not clearly understand macro-scale processes that shaped the colonization patterns, apart from plate tectonics. We have also begun to understand the historical processes that shaped the species and morphological diversification, and their distribution patterns of lineages after they colonized the subcontinent. A few studies indicate that the climatic oscillations taking place in the Cenozoic has played a major role in this regard, but we still do not have enough understanding to establish common patterns or the underlying processes. Lastly, geographical patterns of genetic diversity which are relatively underexplored in the subcontinent have seen some recent advances especially with the help of next generation sequencing. The Indian subcontinent is extremely heterogeneous in terms of climate and geography and is home to a diverse host of biota, which has the potential to deepen our understanding of macro and microevolutionary processes. The goal of the symposium is to bring young and experienced researchers alike to address some of these lacunae and plan the way forward.
  • Ramya Bala Prabhakaran, National Institute of Advanced Studies
  • Renee Borges, Indian Institute of Science

    As global warming intensifies, the IPCC report predicts that major carbon sinks will face increasing stress. Large-scale afforestation and restoration programmes, often designed without long-term ecological context, threaten ancient fire-adapted ecosystems and the services they provide. These challenges expose a core problem in conservation and climate policy: management baselines are usually drawn from only a few decades of observation, while ecosystems themselves are shaped by climate variability, disturbance and human intervention over centuries to millennia – evidence for which can be found in paleoecological records. Palaeontological records on the other hand, provide a powerful but underused archive of how biodiversity, fire and climate have interacted through deep time. Fossil and sedimentary evidence from the Quaternary period, spanning the last 2.58 million years of strong climate oscillations, documents repeated shifts in species distributions, community composition and ecosystem resilience. Yet such data remain largely absent from global climate assessments, including IPCC. This symposium brings together palaeontologists, paleoecologists and long-term ecologists to explore how deep-time records can be translated into ecosystem modelling and adaptive management strategies.
  • G Umapathy, CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology
  • Mukesh Thakur, Zoological Survey of India

    Biodiversity assessment, monitoring & conservation face growing challenges, particularly in complex ecosystems where species detection is difficult due to vast habitats and elusive organisms. Conventional methods are often labour-intensive, invasive, time consuming or biased, limiting their ability to capture comprehensive ecological patterns and delaying conservation responses. Environmental DNA (eDNA) -genetic material shed by organisms into their surroundings has emerged as a powerful, non-invasive approach that overcomes many of these limitations by enabling sensitive and rapid biodiversity assessments. Spanning taxa from viruses to mammals, eDNA facilitates monitoring across diverse ecosystems, including oceans, freshwater systems, soils and even air. It provides critical insights into human-induced threats such as habitat degradation, ecosystem health decline, climate change impacts and biodiversity loss, while also helping address fundamental ecological questions. This symposium aims to explore the multifaceted applications of eDNA, ranging from single-species detection to community-level biodiversity assessment, disease surveillance in wildlife&humans and ecosystem service evaluation. By integrating molecular tools with real-world case studies, the symposium highlights the potential of eDNA to strengthen conservation efforts and promote interdisciplinary collaborations.
  • Manjari Jain, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Mohali
  • Divya Panicker, Ashoka University
  • Satyam Gupta, Ashoka University

    Animals inhabit an acoustic world where information travels faster than they do. Bioacoustics offers a powerful, non-invasive lens into this realm, revealing how individuals communicate, compete, and adapt to changing environments. Following the successful IWEC 2024 bioacoustics symposium, this session expands both scope and depth by gathering researchers across taxa and soundscapes to demonstrate how acoustic signals encode behaviour, social and mating systems, species identity, and habitat quality. The talks will cover a broad range of themes in animal acoustic communication and soundscape ecology, from the molecular and neurobiological foundations of sound processing to the fundamental mechanisms of signal production, transmission, and perception. We will also examine applied uses of acoustic data for biodiversity monitoring and environmental change, showcasing studies that blend detailed fieldwork with quantitative techniques, automated analyses, machine learning, and long-term acoustic datasets. To foster an inclusive dialogue, we aim to feature a diverse range of perspectives from senior, mid-career, and early-career researchers, along with students. Additionally, we seek broad representation from Research Institutes, Universities, and NGOs to bridge academic innovation with practical conservation applications.

  • Ahmad Masood Khan, Aligarh Muslim University

    Wildlife across ecosystems is increasingly exposed to human-driven disturbances such as habitat modification, infrastructure development, tourism, resource extraction, and changing land-use practices. These pressures often first appear as changes in behaviour,altered activity patterns, shifts in habitat use, modified social interactions, and changes in risk-taking-long before population declines become evident. Understanding behavioural responses is therefore critical for interpreting ecological resilience and vulnerability. This symposium brings together studies that examine how different forms of disturbance influence wildlife behaviour and, in turn, shape ecological outcomes. Drawing on field-based research across terrestrial and aquatic systems, presentations will explore behavioural responses across taxa, including mammals, birds, reptiles, and invertebrates. Themes include behavioural plasticity, vigilance and stress responses, movement and space use, altered foraging strategies, and changes in breeding and social behaviour under disturbance. The session links behavioural change to ecological outcomes, including survival, reproduction, and species interactions. Case studies reveal both adaptive responses and ecological limits, concluding with a synthesis on integrating behaviour into ecological research and conservation planning.

  • Seshadri K S, Ashoka Trust For Research In Ecology And The Environment
  • Harish Prakash, GITAM University
  • Sudhira HS, GubbiLabs

    As the boundaries between urban and rural blur, cities are emerging as critical ecological frontiers with novel ecosystems. While urbanization replaces natural landscapes, it also creates novel and complex matrices where wildlife persists. The process of urbanization is dynamic and varies in both extent and intensity, especially in the Global South. Many cities in India have their own biodiversity indices and aspire to be resilient, especially to climate change. Yet, the data on biodiversity are sparse or in the form of checklists. Our symposium explores the concept of the ‘Biodiverse’city’. We will curate a series of recent research on urban ecosystems from India by focussing on three core inquiries:

  1. What persists in our expanding metropolises?
  2. Where do they find refuge within cities?
  3. How can these ecological insights be integrated into urban planning?

    Our approach will focus on multi-taxa research, complemented by perspectives from urban planning and governance. By moving beyond documenting biodiversity loss, we will underscore the importance of finding actionable pathways for creating resilient urbanscapes. We expect the attendees to take back with them a holistic understanding of urban ecology and the importance of bridging the gap between field biology and city design.

  • Pritha Dey, National Centre for Biological Sciences
  • Gauri Gharpure, Independent Researcher
  • Mansi Mungee, Azim Premji University

    Insects have few rivals among multicellular life in terms of diversity, abundance, and ecological impact. They provide ecosystem services across the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (Churchill 2005) categories, including pollination, nutrient cycling, pest regulation, and cultural service. Globally, insect populations are rapidly changing, driven by climate change, land-use intensification, pollution, and biological invasions. These are reshaping communities and altering interactions, with cascading ecosystem impacts threatening global food security, and accelerating the sixth mass extinction. In India, insects remain under-represented within mainstream ecological and conservation discourse. This gap is driven by limited long-term datasets, fragmented evidence, and focus on few taxa or research themes,which together limit our ability to detect trends, understand mechanisms, and inform conservation action. This symposium aims to foreground insects in Indian wildlife ecology by highlighting research on community ecology, biotic and prey–host interactions, and indicator species for environmental change. We invite contributions that examine spatial and temporal variation in insect communities and showcase integrative monitoring approaches including trait-based and molecular methods, citizen science, automated sensors, and imaging pipelines to advance insect research in India.
  • Milind Bunyan, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment,
  • VV Robin, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Tirupati

    Invasive alien plant species (IAPS) pose critical threats to India’s biodiversity, but estimates of the area threatened by IAPS vary dramatically by species and geography. This symposium brings together researchers advancing the frontiers of invasion mapping through complementary technological and participatory approaches. Presenters will showcase approaches to mapping IAPS, including developing dynamic IAPS repositories, innovative applications of multispectral and hyperspectral satellite imagery for large-scale monitoring and citizen science platforms that democratize data collection while expanding spatial and temporal coverage beyond conventional monitoring.

    Key themes include: remote sensing techniques for species-level discrimination and site prioritisation; citizen science initiatives and data validation; and development of comprehensive, spatially explicit IAPS databases. The symposium aims to synthesise current knowledge, identify critical methodological gaps, and foster collaborative networks for actionable insights for mapping IAPS across India’s diverse ecosystems.

  • J.A. Johnson, Wildlife Institute of India
  • Biju Kumar, University of Kerala
  • Ruchi Badola, Wildlife Institute of India

    Rivers are vital ecosystems and have served as a lifeline for human civilizations for centuries. Early societies settled along riverbanks due to their dependence on freshwater resources. Pristine rivers are biodiversity hotspots, providing critical habitats for diverse taxa. However, in the Anthropocene, rapid population growth and intensified human activities have placed immense pressure on freshwater ecosystems. Anthropogenic stressors such as dam construction, sand mining, industrial discharge, and overexploitation have severely degraded riverine habitats, pushing many endemic species toward extinction. Understanding these stressors is essential for the conservation of freshwater biodiversity. Wildlife entanglement has emerged as a significant but often overlooked threat. Abandoned, discarded, or lost fishing gear (ADLF) continues to trap organisms long after disposal, a phenomenon known as ghost fishing. Beyond direct mortality, ghost gear alters ecosystem health by trapping sediments, attracting biofoulers, and promoting algal blooms. These impacts not only deplete wild populations but also reduce fish harvests, directly affecting the livelihoods of fishing communities. Strengthening the blue economy requires a transition from a linear “take–make–dispose” model to a circular economy that emphasizes recycling, reuse, and repurposing thereby sustaining livelihood.
  • Asmita Kabra, Ashoka University
  • Budhaditya Das, Dr B.R. Ambedkar University Delhi

    Through this symposium, they will highlight the political ecology of conservation in and around protected areas and other biodiversity rich areas in India. We will discuss the linkages between conservation and local communities, their livelihoods, knowledge systems and cosmologies.
  • Alok Bang, Azim Premji University
  • Manzoor A Shah, University of Kashmir

    Biological invasions rank among the worst drivers of biodiversity loss, and yet, remain largely ignored. The session will provide a platform for synthesising diverse perspectives, identifying knowledge gaps, and discussing how invasion science can better inform conservation policy and on-the-ground action. Topics may include, but are not limited to, biotic resistance and facilitation, trait-based and evolutionary perspectives, ecosystem-level impacts, interactions with other drivers of biodiversity loss such as climate and land-use change, and the effectiveness of prevention and control strategies. Data-driven studies as well as evidence-based perspectives are encouraged. In place of narrowly focused, single-site investigations, the symposium will particularly benefit from contributions that span regional, national, or global scales.
Organizer
Ashoka University
Co-organizer
Wildlife Trust of India
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IWE26: Indian Wildlife Ecology Conference 2026
Reach us at contact@iwecindia.in