Readings and Writings on Animal Behaviour

Prof. Raghavendra Gadagkar, Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science (IISc)

On a mundane evening in April 2021, I came across an article in The Wire Science about how insect societies, such as honeybees and ants, deal with infectious diseases. I was hooked right from the very beginning. These insect colonies have an immune system, just like us, called social immunity. It is a fascinating phenomenon – every individual in the colony collectively participates in certain protective behaviour that reduces the risk of infection and controls the spread of disease. I spent that night exploring the papers and studies linked in the article, learning more about social immunity.

At the time, I had been away from normalcy for over a year, and the pandemic showed no sign of abating. Since January, I had been writing to various ecologists and ethologists across India, asking to work with them over the summer to explore the field through a short project. I had written to several scientists without any success. After reading the article on social immunity in Dr. Gadagkar’s column (More Fun Than Fun), I wrote to him requesting an online summer internship. I was shocked when I received a reply – a positive one at that!

During my first month at IISER Pune, Dr. Gadagkar had given a fascinating talk about his work on sociality and altruism in the Indian paper wasp at the institute colloquium. I was nervous and, at the same time, excited to meet him – it felt like a dream. I was eager to get started immediately instead of waiting for the summer break to begin. I began by reading books about animal behaviour, and I met with Dr. Gadagkar every week to discuss what I had read. After taking a break for my semester exams, we resumed with a greater focus on reading and writing — my goals to read more and write well aligned with what Dr. Gadagkar had in mind. Over the course of this project, I read six books on animal behaviour and many papers on social immunity. I wrote a book review and three essays based on the books I read. You can ready about my essays on the myth of the coy female and about the life of a cuckoo on my website.

I also prepared a report on the impact of a research article that draws analogies between individual and social immunity. The idea of the impact report is to discuss the impact of a particular paper on the field. The paper I focused on is Analogies in the Evolution of Individual and Social Immunity (Cremer and Sixt 2009). In the focal paper, Prof. Sylvia Cremer and Prof. Michael Sixt draw parallels between the organisation, function and evolution of individual and social immunity. I analysed the impact of the focal paper by going through all the papers that cite it. This project introduced me to the idea of a literature review and the process of doing one. Once I collected the citations, I analysed the context and theme of the citations. We can understand the impact and implications of this paper by considering the context in which it was cited (whether the paper mentions, supports or contests the focal paper), what kind of papers it was cited by and how the concept has been advanced since it was published.

Most importantly, over the course of the project, I had the opportunity to interact with a great mentor and work with an invested editor, so I could focus on both the form and the content of scientific writing.