Dr Parvathy Venugopal
Lab Alumni
I am a conservation biologist by conviction and biodiversity scientist by training. I hail from the God’s own Country -Kerala- in India. In 2011, I completed my BSc (Hons) in ‘Forestry’ from the College of Forestry (COF), Kerala Agricultural University. This included a research project on the "In vitro propagation of Santalum album (Sandal) through somatic embryogenesis". I received my MSc in Forestry with a specialisation in Wildlife Sciences in 2013 from the same alma mater during which I developed the DNA Barcodes for the insectivorous bat species present in the Parambikulam Tiger Reserve, Western Ghats, Kerala. Thereafter, I joined as a Teaching Assistant in the Wildlife Department in COF until October 2014 where I took classes for undergraduate students and helped master's students with their projects.
I recently completed my PhD at University of Bristol as a ‘Commonwealth Scholar’. I received CSC Research Support Grant for three years to conduct my research which focused on unravelling the taxonomic ambiguity in two hipposiderid bat species - Hipposideros lankadiva and Hipposideros Pomona - from the Indian Subcontinent and Southeast Asia. I have used an integrated taxonomic approach (which includes conventional morphometrics, geometric morphometrics, acoustics and molecular techniques) along with species distribution modelling techniques to re-evaluate the taxonomic status as well as distribution of the subspecies of these study taxa.
Publications
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RAMACHANDRAN A., MANOHAR, K. A., VENUGOPAL, P., NAMEER, P.O., 2015. Spider feeding on a Vespertilionid bat from Kerala, South India. CURRENT SCIENCE, 109(7), p.1245.