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Avian haemosporidian may affect the host from body damage to the extinction of a population. Knowledge of their status may help in future avifauna conservation plans. Hence, their status in two bird groups of India and their phylogenetic relationships with other known lineages of the world were examined.Cytochrome b gene sequences (479 bp) generated from India and available at MalAvi database were used to study the avian haemosporidian prevalence and phylogenetic analysis of lineages at local and world levels.One common (COLL2) and only once in the study (CYOPOL01, CHD01, CYORUB01, EUMTHA01, GEOCIT01) haemosporidian lineages were discovered. 5.88% prevalence of haemosporidian infection was found in 102 samples belonging to 6 host species. Haemoproteus prevalence was 4.90% across five host species (Phylloscopus trochiloides, Cyornis poliogenys, C. hainanus dialilaemus, C. rubeculoides, Eumiyas thalassinus) and Plasmodium prevalence was 0.98% in Geokichla citrina. Spatial phylogeny at the global level showed that COLL2 lineage, found in C. poliogenys in India, was genetically identical to H. pallidus lineages (COLL2) in parts of Africa, Europe, North America, Malaysia, and the Philippines. The Plasmodium lineage (GEOCIT01) was related to PADOM16 in Egypt, but the sequences were only 93.89% alike.Four new lineages of Haemoproteus and one of Plasmodium were reported. COLL2 similarity with other H. pallidus lineages may suggest their hosts as possible infection sources.

Burgeoning pressures of habitat loss is a major cause of herbivore decline across India, forcing them to coexist with humans in non-protected areas. Their conservation in such landscapes is challenging due to paucity of ecological and demographic information. The northern subspecies of swamp deer, Rucervus duvaucelii duvaucelii, is one such herbivore that lives across human-dominated landscapes in Terai region and upper Gangetic plains of north India. Here, we describe species-specific molecular markers and a cervid-specific molecular sexing assay for swamp deer and four other coexisting cervids sambar, chital, barking deer and hog deer. Our markers show species-specific band patterns and a high success rate of 88.21% in large number of field collected reference samples for all species. Faecal pellets from pilot swamp deer survey samples from upper Ganges basin show 93.81% success rate, and only 5.5% misidentification based on morphological characteristics. Our cervid-specific molecular sexing multiplex assay accurately ascertained 81.15% samples to respective sexes. These molecular approaches provide an easy, quick and cheap option to generate critical information on herbivore population parameters and aid their conservation in this mosaic of protected and non-protected grassland habitats.

We studied a guild of overwintering Phylloscopus warblers (Hume’s Warbler, Grey-hooded Warbler, Lemon-rumped Warbler) in the Himalayan foothills to gain an understanding of the manner in which they respond to changes in their habitat structure and resource availability from early to late winter (2006–2007). The relative abundances of birds and vegetation attributes were quantified at 91 point count stations. Arthropod abundance was measured in both the tree and shrub layers. Foraging behaviour was characterized in terms of the following dimensions: foraging height, foraging tree species, foraging manoeuvre and foraging substrate. From early to late winter, we observed a significant decline in vegetation cover in the canopy layer and arthropod abundance in both the tree and shrub layers, but did not detect any associated decline in the relative abundance of the three species. While a general shift to lower foraging heights was observed in late winter, no significant seasonal variation could be detected at the species level in the other dimensions. Furthermore, though interspecific segregation by foraging heights remained conserved across winter, foraging segregation in terms of the use of foraging trees and manoeuvres emerged only in late winter. Our results suggest that a shift in foraging patterns enabled the guild to adjust to changes in habitat structure and decline in food availability in winter.