Azim Premji University

Krishnapriya Tamma

Areas of Interest & Expertise

  • Tropical Ecology
  • Forest Recovery
  • Forest Resilience
  • Avian Frugivores
  • Avian Community Ecology
  • Urban Ecology

Biography

Krishnapriya (Priya as she is fondly called) is an ecologist with an interest in tropical forest ecology and evolution. After completing her BE from RV College of Engineering, Bangalore, she pursued her PhD from National Centre for Biological Sciences-TIFR, Bangalore, in ecology. Her PhD thesis focused on biogeography and macroecology of small mammals in the Indian subcontinent. While conducting field work in the eastern Himalayas, she became interested in understanding forest recovery and resilience. Prior to joining the University, she was pursuing her postdoctoral research at the Centre for Ecological Sciences, IISc, on forest-savanna dynamics in Africa. Currently, her research focuses on monitoring forest resilience in northeast India, and avian frugivore community structure. Recently, she has also initiated projects around urban biodiversity, climate change impacts, and climate justice. Apart from her research, she likes to contribute to science communication. She is a member of the editorial board of Resonance and is the chief RIT-editor at Current Conservation. She likes to bicycle, stare at trees, and garden.


Courses

Articles

Peer-reviewed Publications

  • Krishnan, A, Singh, A and Tamma, K. (2020). Visual signal evolution along complementary color axes in four bird lineages. Biology Open. https://​bio​.biol​o​gists​.org/​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​9​/​9​/​b​i​o​0​52316
  • Sheth, C… Tamma, K.., et al. (2020). ​‘The devil is in the detail’: Peer-review of the Wildlife Conservation Plan by the Wildlife Institute of India for the Etalin Hydropower Project, Dibang Valley. https://​zoosprint​.zoore​ach​.org/​i​n​d​e​x​.​p​h​p​/​z​p​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​v​i​e​w​/5686
  • Majumder, S*., Tamma, K*., Ramaswamy, S and Guttal, V. (2019). Inferring critical points of ecosystem transitions from spatial data. Ecology (*equal contribution) https://​doi​.org/​1​0​.​1​0​0​2​/​e​c​y​.2722
  • Ramachandran, V., Robin, V.V., Tamma, K., Ramakrishnan, U. (2017). Climatic and geographic barriers drive distributional patterns of bird phenotypes within peninsular India, Journal of Avian biology. doi:10.1111/jav.01278
  • Krishnan, A*., and Tamma, K*. (2016). Structuring of morphological and acoustic traits in sympatric communities of Asian barbets. Royal Society Open Science. doi: 10.1098/rsos.160117 (* equal contribution)
  • Tamma, K., Marathe, A., Ramakrishnan, U. (2016). Past influences present: Species from multiple biogeographic pools sort environmentally in Indian subcontinent, Frontiers of Biogeography.
  • Tamma, K and Ramakrishnan U. (2015). Higher speciation and lower extinction rates influence mammal diversity gradients in Asia, BMC Evolutionary Biology. doi: 10.1186/s12862-015‑0289‑1
  • Srinivasan, U., Tamma, K and Ramakrishnan U. (2014). Past climate and species ecology drive nested species richness patterns along an east-west axis in the Himalaya, Global Ecology and Biogeography. doi: 10.1111/geb.12082
  • Mukherjee, S., Krishnan, A., Tamma, K., Home, C., Navya, R., Joseph S., Das, A., and Ramakrishnan U. (2010). Ecology driving genetic variation: A comparative phylogeography of Jungle cat (Felis chaus) and leopard cat (Prionailurus bengalensis) in India, Plos One. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0013724

Newspaper articles

On-going Projects

Human impacts on critical thresholds of forest-savanna transitions in Africa Monitoring resilience of forests in protected areas using remotely-sensed technologies