Dr. Soumya Prasad
Assistant Professor (UGC Faculty Recharge)
Room No : 229, School of Life Sciences
Jawaharlal Nehru University,
New Delhi - 110 067, India.
Office Tel: +91-11-26704531
 E-mail:  soumya@jnu.ac.in
Personal webpage: http://www.naturescienceinitiative.org/Soumya-Prasad
http://scholar.google.co.in/citations?user=LN0bnoUAAAAJ&hl=en   

Qualifications:  

  • PhD: 2010 from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India
  • M.Sc: 2001 from the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, India.
  • B.Sc: 1999, from the Bangalore University, Bangalore, India

Research Areas:

Tropical ecology; functional ecology - seed dispersal; conservation biology - plant invasions, plant responses to climate change; movement ecology;

Research is being pursued in four broad inter-related areas of ecology and conservation biology:

1. Examining effects of landuse change on seed dispersal processes
2. Integrating plant dispersal into models predicting vegetation responses to climate change
3. Developing approaches to examine species interactions at community scales
4. Examining alterations to ruminant-plant interaction networks

Experience:

  • 2014 – present: Assistant Professor, School of Life Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University (UGC Faculty Recharge Programme)

  • 2014-2014: Post-doctoral Research Associate at the Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science.

  • 2012-2014: National Environmental Sciences Fellow, MoEF with CES, IISc.

  • 2012-present: Visiting scientist, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, Ecosystems Division, Atheron, Australia.

  • 2011-2012: Post-doctoral Research Associate at the CES, IISc.

  • 2010-2011: Consultant, IUCN Asian Elephant Specialist Group.

  • 2003-04: Project assistant at Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun.

  • 2002-03: Project assistant with Rainforest Restoration Program, Nature Conservation Foundation.

Awards & Honours :

  1. Assistant Professorship through UGC Faculty Recharge, University Grants Commission, Government of India, 2014

  2. National Environmental Sciences Fellowship: Ministry of Environments and Forests, Government of India, 2012.

  3. Alwyn Gentry Award at ATBC annual meeting at Bali, Indonesia, July 2010.

  4. David W. Snow Award at the V International Symposium on Frugivores and Seed dispersal, France, June 2010.

  5. Lectureship from CSIR-UGC through the National Eligibility Test (NET), 2004

  6. PhD fellowship from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, 2004-2010.

  7. MSc fellowship from Ministry of Environment & Forests, Government of India at Wildlife Institute of India, 1999-2001.

  8. Summer Research Fellowship from the Jawaharlal Nehru Center for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCAR) in Ecology (1998)

International Collaboration/Consultancy :

  • Visiting Scientist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, Australia, with Dr. David Westcott

  • Collaborator on Australia-India Strategic Research Fund grant with IISc and CSIRO, 2012-2014

  • Workshop participant, Networks in Ecology, University of Umea, Sweden, 2014

  • India Representative and Treasurer, Association for Tropical Biology & Conservation – Asia-Pacific Chapter

Best Peer Reviewed Publications (upto 5) :

  1. Karel Mokany, Soumya Prasad & David Westcott 2014. Loss of seed dispersal services under climate change. Nature Communications 5.

  2. Soumya Prasad, M. Krishnadas, K. McConkey, & A. Dutta, 2014. The tangled causes of population decline: response to Ticktin et al. 2012. Journal of Applied Ecology 51 (3), 642-647.

  3. Kim McConkey, Soumya Prasad, R. Corlett, A. Campos-Arciez, J. Brodie, H. Rogers, L. Santamaria.2012. Seed Dispersal in Changing Landscapes. Biological Conservation 146: 1–13

  4. Soumya Prasad & R. Sukumar 2010. Context-dependency of a complex fruit-frugivore mutualism: temporal variation in crop size and neighborhood effects. Oikos 119: 514-523.

  5. Ghazala Shahabuddin & Soumya Prasad. 2004. Assessing Ecological Sustainability of Non-Timber Forest Produce Extraction: the Indian Scenario. Conservation and Society 2: 235-250

    Complete publication list available at:
    http://scholar.google.co.in/citations?user=LN0bnoUAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao

Recent Peer Reviewed Journals/Books (upto 3) :

  1. Karel Mokany, David Westcott, Soumya Prasad, A. J. Ford & D. J. Metcalfe 2014, Identifying priority areas for conservation and management in diverse tropical forests. PLOS ONE 9 (2), e89084.

  2. Geetha Ramaswami, Soumya Prasad, David Westcott, Subuddhi, SP; Sukumar, R. 2014. Indian Forester 140(2), 129 – 136.

  3. Shivani Jadeja, Soumya Prasad, S. Quader, and K. Isvaran. 2013, Antelope mating strategies facilitate invasion of grasslands by a woody weed. Oikos. doi: 10.1111/j.1600-0706.2013.00320.x

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