The tiger is a large cat and a member of the genus Panthera native to Asia. It has a powerful, muscular body with a large head and paws, a long tail and orange fur with black, mostly vertical stripes. It is traditionally classified into nine recent subspecies, though some recognise only two subspecies, mainland Asian tigers and the island tigers of the Sunda Islands.
The Bengal tiger or Royal Bengal tiger is a population of the Panthera tigris tigris subspecies and the nominate tiger subspecies. It ranks among the biggest wild cats alive today. It is estimated to have been present in the Indian subcontinent since the Late Pleistocene for about 12,000 to 16,500 years. Its historical range covered the Indus River valley until the early 19th century, almost all of India, western Pakistan, southern Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan and southwestern China. Today, it inhabits India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and southwestern China. It is threatened by poaching, habitat loss and habitat fragmentation.
The Indochinese tiger is a population of the Panthera tigris tigris subspecies that is native to Southeast Asia. This population occurs in Myanmar and Thailand. In 2011, the population was thought to comprise 342 individuals, including 85 in Myanmar and 20 in Vietnam, with the largest population unit surviving in Thailand, estimated at 189 to 252 individuals during the period 2009 to 2014.
Obaid Siddiqi FRS was an Indian National Research Professor and the Founder-Director of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) National Center for Biological Sciences. He made seminal contributions to the field of behavioural neurogenetics using the genetics and neurobiology of Drosophila.
Mudumalai National Park is a national park in the Nilgiri Mountains in Tamil Nadu in southern India. It covers 321 km2 (124 sq mi) at an elevation range of 850–1,250 m (2,790–4,100 ft) in the Nilgiri District and shares boundaries with the states of Karnataka and Kerala. A part of this area has been protected since 1940. The national park has been part of Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve since 1986 and was declared a tiger reserve together with a buffer zone of 367.59 km2 (141.93 sq mi) in 2007. It receives an annual rainfall of about 1,420 mm (56 in) and harbours tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests with 498 plant species, at least 266 bird species, 18 carnivore and 10 herbivore species. It is drained by the Moyar River and several tributaries, which harbour 38 fish species.
National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) in Bangalore, Karnataka, is a research centre specialising in biological research. It is a part of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) under the Department of Atomic Energy of the Government of India. The mandate of NCBS is basic and interdisciplinary research in the frontier areas of biology. The research interests of the faculty are in four broad areas ranging from the study of single molecules to systems biology. Obaid Siddiqi FRS was an Indian National Research Professor and the Founder-Director of NCBS. He made seminal contributions to the field of behavioural neurogenetics using the genetics and neurobiology of Drosophila.
Kota Ullas Karanth is a conservation zoologist and a leading tiger expert based in Karnataka, India. He was the director of the Wildlife Conservation Society's India Programme. He is notable for pioneering the scientific use of camera traps in population density studies of large wild mammals in India. He was a Senior Conservation Scientist with the New York based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Technical Director of the WCS Tiger Conservation Program.
Madhav Dhananjaya Gadgil is an Indian ecologist, academic, writer, columnist and the founder of the Centre for Ecological Sciences, a research forum under the aegis of the Indian Institute of Science. He is a former member of the Scientific Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India and the Head of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) of 2010, popularly known as the Gadgil Commission.
The Indian leopard is a subspecies of the leopard widely distributed on the Indian subcontinent. It is threatened by illegal trade of skins and body parts, and persecution due to human-leopard conflict and retaliation for livestock depredation.
India is one of the most biodiverse regions and is home to a large variety of wildlife. It is one of the 17 megadiverse countries and includes three of the world's 36 biodiversity hotspots – the Western Ghats, the Eastern Himalayas, and the Indo-Burma hotspot.
Mysore Doreswamy Madhusudan is an Indian wildlife biologist and ecologist. He is the Co-founder and Director of Nature Conservation Foundation, Mysore and a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Leeds. He has worked on understanding and mitigating the effects of human-wildlife conflict in the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve in South India. He has also worked in several other forests in the Himalayas and North-east India. In 2004, he was one among the team of wildlife biologists who described Arunachal macaque, a new species of macaque from Arunachal Pradesh, India.
Mewa Singh is an Indian primatologist, ethologist, and conservation biologist. He was a professor of ecology and animal behavior at University of Mysore Biopsychology Department in Mysore, Karnataka. Currently he is a Life-Long Distinguished Professor in University of Mysore. Singh has a Bachelor's degree in English, a Master's and a PhD degree in Psychology but was never formally trained in Biological or Conservation Sciences. Yet he is popular and revered for coordinating courses in Evolution, Genetics, Animal Behavior, Conservation Biology and Statistics not only in his department at the University of Mysore but at academic schools, conferences and faculty refresher courses throughout the country.
Veronica Filomena Rodrigues (1953–2010) was a Kenyan born Indian biologist. Veronica completed a B.A with honors in microbiology from Trinity College Dublin. After being inspired by the work of Obaid Siddiqi and his co-workers, she moved to India to pursue her Ph.D. While doing her PhD, considering her exceptional work, she was offered a permanent faculty position at TIFR. She also served as a senior professor at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore. In 2004 she received the Senior National Woman Bioscientist Award. She died in 2010 after suffering from breast cancer for five years.
Gaiti Hasan is an Indian scientist who researches in the fields of molecular biology, genetics, neuroscience and cell signalling. Hasan is a Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy (INSA), the apex body of Indian scientists and technologists. From 2013 onwards she has been serving as a Senior Professor at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bangalore.
Lingadahalli Subrahmanya Shashidhara is an Indian developmental biologist, geneticist and a professor of biology currently serving as the Centre Director of National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bengaluru, India. He is a Professor at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune, and at Ashoka University, Sonepat, India. He heads the LSS Laboratory at IISER and is known for his studies on Drosophila, particularly the evolution of appendages and functions of homeotic selector genes. He is a J. C. Bose National Fellow of the Department of Science and Technology and an elected fellow of the Indian National Science Academy, Indian Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences, India. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 2008, for his contributions to biological sciences.
Ramanathan Sowdhamini is an Indian computational biologist, bioinformatician. He is a professor at the department of biochemistry, biophysics and bioinformatics of the National Centre for Biological Sciences, a TIFR research facility located in Bengaluru. Known for computational studies in the field of Protein Science, Sowdhamini is also associated with the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine as a collaborator and is an elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences as well as the Indian National Science Academy. The Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India awarded her the National Bioscience Award for Career Development, one of the highest Indian science awards, for her contributions to biosciences in 2007.
Rhinolophus indorouxii is a recently discovered species of horse-shoe bat in the family Rhinolophidae that is found in Southern India.
Sanjay Gubbi is a conservation biologist based in Karnataka, India. His work focuses on the conservation of large carnivores like tigers and leopards, working on applied aspects and understanding their population biology, proposing conservation policies for their protection, and working to minimize human-wildlife conflict. He currently works as a scientist with Nature Conservation Foundation, a Mysore based NGO.
Yadvendradev Vikramsinh Jhala is an Indian scientist and conservationist who recently ended his tenure as the Dean at the Wildlife Institute of India in Dehradun.
Srinivasan Ramakrishnan is a condensed matter physicist working on experimental ultra-low temperature research. He was the director and distinguished professor of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR). Recently, he joined IISER Pune as a distinguished professor.
