GEOGRAPHY OF RESEARCH
Two regions, the Western Ghats and the Nicobar archipelago, have been my major playing fields. The Nicobar archipelago is a group of 20+ islands and islets. In the early 2000s, I sampled fifteen of them to understand patterns of distribution of frogs, lizards and snakes, but had to terminate the research because of the 2004 tsunami. I then shifted my focus to some 15 odd massifs in the Western Ghats Escarpment, a repository of ancient, relict and young lineages that makes it an evolutionary biogeographer’s dream place. I have left a few footprints in the Ladakh Trans-Himalayan region during a short stint in that cold desert. The grand plan is to expand our current insights from the Western Ghats to Peninsular India and, if possible, to the Eastern Himalayan and SE Asian regions. Also, awaiting a revisit to the archipelago with upgraded spectacles! |