Wildlife Institute of India, Chandrabani, Dehradun 248001, India.
+91-9359433837, +91-0135-2646161
suresh [at] wii [dot] gov [dot] in
About
By training I am a wildlife biologist (M.Sc Wildlife Science from the Wildlife Institute of India) and my primary interest is in research on lesser known and threatened fauna, their ecology and conservation. Over the last 28 years, I have had the opportunity to work in different landscapes across India starting from the high temperate and alpine reaches of the Himalayas to the coastal and marine areas including the Lakshadweep and Andaman & Nicobar Islands. I started my research career with a study on pheasant distributions in the Eastern Himalaya Biodiversity Hotspot in north-east India where I discovered a new subspecies of Sclater’s monal pheasant Lophophorus sclateri. Following which I was involved in carrying out an ecological study on a new species of monkey – the Arunachal macaque Macaca munzala from western Arunachal Pradesh, India. I later moved on to yet another challenging area and subject of study - to determine the offshore distribution of Olive ridley sea turtle Lepidochelys olivacea along the east coast of India. This study involved the use of satellite telemetry to understand the movements and migration of the ridley turtles, and it was the topic of my doctoral research. My seafaring experiences also took me to Antarctica, where as part of the 29th Indian Scientific Expedition I conducted aerial surveys for marine mammals and birds. In recent times, my research has focussed more on tracking fine-scale movements and migration of birds and marine turtles in the Indian region, and along with it the role of the Indian monsoon influencing the movements of species.
In 2008, I joined the Wildlife Institute of India as faculty and along with undertaking research I am also involved in both teaching and training assignments. At present, I also hold the position of Nodal Officer of the Wildlife Institute of India - Category 2 Centre (WII-C2C) for World Natural Heritage Management and Training for Asia and the Pacific Region, under the auspices of UNESCO.
Research Interest
Animal ecology
Conservation biology
Migration and movement studies
Publications
Bala, R., Kumar, R.S., Gokhale, P., Mohan, D. and Barve, S. (2024). House Sparrows Passer domesticus increase in body size and dorsal feather insulation along a Himalayan elevational gradient. Journal of Field Ornithology 95(2):10
Kaur, A., Jacob, A., Mehta, D. and Kumar, R.S. (2024). Prey Species in the Diet of the Amur Falcon (Falco amurensis) during Autumn Passage Stopover in Northeast India. Journal of Raptor Research, Vol. 58 (3)
de Zwaan, D.R., Scridel, D., Altamirano, T.A., Gokhale, P., Kumar, R.S., Sevillano-Ríos, S., Barras, A.G., Arredondo-Amezcua, L., Asefa, A., Carrillo, R.A., Green, K. and Martin, K. (2022). GABB: A global dataset of alpine breeding birds and their ecological traits. Scientific data, 9(1), 627
Taneja, Y. V., Page, N. V., Kumar, R.S. and Naniwadekar, R. (2022). Effects of canopy cover on fruiting intensity and fruit removal of a tropical invasive weed. Forest Ecology and Management, 523, 120502
Prakash, H., Kumar, R.S., Lahkar, B., Sukumar, R., Vanak, A. T. and Thaker, M. (2022). Animal movement ecology in India: insights from 2011–2021 and prospective for the future. PeerJ, 10, e14401
Cohen, T.M,, Major, R. E., Kumar, R.S., Nair, M., Ewart, K. M., Hauber, M. E. and Dor, R. (2021). Rapid morphological changes as agents of adaptation in introduced populations of the common myna (Acridotheres tristis). Evolutionary Ecology, 35, 443-462
Cohen, T.M., Kumar, R.S., Nair, M., Hauber, M.E. and Dor, R. (2020). Innovation and decreased neophobia drive invasion success in a widespread avian invader. Animal Behaviour, 163, 61-72
Piross, I.S., Siliwal, M., Kumar, R.S., Palatitz, P., Solt, S., Borbáth, P., Vili, N., Magonyi, N., Vas, Z., Rózsa, L. and Harnos, A. (2020). Sex interacts with age-dependent change in the abundance of lice-infesting Amur Falcons (Falco amurensis). Parasitology Research, 119, 2579-2585
Singh, A., Gupta, S.K., Alström, P., Mohan, D., Hooper, D.M., Kumar, R.S., Bhatt, D., Singh, P. and Price, T.D. (2020). Taxonomy of cryptic species in the Cyornis rubeculoides complex in the Indian subcontinent. Ibis, 162(3), 924-935
Justa, P., Kumar, R.S., Talukdar, G. and Sinha, A. (2019). Sharing from the same bowl: resource partitioning between sympatric macaque species in the western Himalaya, India. International Journal of Primatology, 40, 356-373
Last updated 21-06-2025
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Dr. R. Suresh Kumar
Wildlife Institute of India, Chandrabani, Dehradun 248001, India.
+91-9359433837, +91-0135-2646161
suresh [at] wii [dot] gov [dot] in