A new study shows that the Palghat Gap in southern India is the barrier separating the various colour morphs of the endemic gastropod Indrella ampulla. The article by Arathi Menon on Mongabay makes for excellent coverage of this study, which yet again proves the biogeographical mettle of the Palghat Gap!
Read another Green Humour comic on genetic isolation resulting from gaps in the Western Ghats here.
Cartoon for Roundglass Sustain.
(For readers from outside of India: the word ‘Mallu’ is a colloquial term referring to Malayali people from the southern state of Kerala).
A pair of Serotine bats recently made news after being recorded on a church camera making love (you read that right), albeit ‘non-conventionally’, making them the first known wild mammals to indulge in non-penetrative fertilization! I know you all might claim to be such ‘wild mammals’ too, but that discussion is for another day.
Comic from my column with Roundglass Sustain. Read more about the church footage from Castenray, Netherlands, leading to a scientific report on the Serotine bats here.
On a cold December morning in 2021 at the Vena Lake in my hometown Nagpur, I observed a cheerful Little Ringed Plover perform a strange dance: repeated wiggling of the foot followed by pecking the mud. It was clear that this was an improvised hunting strategy, but how exactly it was working, I was not sure. A quick search led me to this paper and I discovered that this behaviour is a little more than just an improvised hunting strategy: the bird’s trembling foot could either be driving out hidden worms and insects directly, or altering the thixotropic properties of wet sand, turning it into liquid, and making catching a juicy tidbit easier!
I may not love physics as much as this little genius does, but we certainly agree upon one thing: the tactile pleasures of dining are lost on compulsive users of cutlery!
Comic strip from my Roundglass Sustain column.
Did you know that the total biomass of the Antarctic Krill, at 379000000 tonnes, is the largest animal biomass of any species on earth? And it is this tiny organism that sustains the entire continent of Antarctica (as well as other landmasses in the Southern Ocean).
I first came to know of this astonishing piece of trivia when I illustrated a panoramic habitat representation of the Antarctic Peninsula for Save Our Seas Foundation . Read more about how all life on Antarctica, right from tiny petrels to gigantic Humpback Whales, link back to the Antarctic Krill in the food web, on the article accompanying the illustration.
That’s one organism that ‘kreally’ deserves an award (and the limelight!)
The comic is a part of my ongoing collaboration with Europe’s leading news channel DW for their social media page.
