Thejasvi Beleyur

Postdoc
Animal Communication and Urban Ecology
+49 8157 932-295
11/1.04

Main Focus

My interests are in understanding the nexus between sensory ecology, social behaviour and decision-making in animals. Using a three-tiered approach of natural observations, manipulations and modelling I hope to understand how individuals in a group are able to handle the ‘sensory’ and ‘physical’ traffic arising from other individuals and the surrounding environment. 

I will use acoustic and video-tracking of bat foraging aggregations, playback experiments to understand their responses to a variety of stimuli, and build simulations using this data that will recreate each individual’s sensory umwelt; through this I shall infer how they decide their next move while foraging in the face of dynamic sensory and social cues.

Curriculum Vitae

Education
2008-2013: Integrated BS-MS Dual Degree from Indian Institute of Science Education and Research-Thiruvananthapuram (IISER-TVM)

Scholarships, fellowships and grants
2015 September - Present: Awarded a stipend to pursue doctoral studies at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology by the ‘German Academic Exchange Service’ (DAAD)
2013 August: Awarded the International Travel Support travel fund from Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India, to attend ‘Behaviour 2013’ at Newcastle, UK.
2008-2012: Recipient of the Kishore Vaigyanik Protsahan Yojana, (KVPY), a scholarship to nurture promising science students awarded by the Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India.

Work experience
August 2014 – August 2015: Research assistant and lab technician at Azim Premji University (APU) and Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. In my role as lab technician I am responsible for the procurement of equipment, maintenance and designing of the practical modules.
Research-wise I’m involved in an interdisciplinary project : As a research assistant I was working on the web building behaviour and biomechanics of the silk in the social spider. This work is a collaboration between Dr. Divya Uma (APU), Dr. Hema Somanathan (IISER-TVM), Dr. Tejas Murty (Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore), and Dr. Pramod Pullarkat (Raman Research Institute, Bangalore)
June 2013- April 2014: Junior Research Fellow at IISER-TVM with Dr. Hema Somanathan, analysing data and executing experiments on task differentiation in social spiders and their associations using social network analysis.
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