Raghavendra Gadagkar, Ph.D.

DST Year of Science Chair Professor

Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore

Born in 1953 in Kanpur, India
Studied Zoology and Molecular Biology in Bangalore

Project

Can We Understand an Insect Society?

I have just completed writing a book titled Experiments in Animal Behaviour: Cutting-Edge Research at Trifling Cost. This has been published as an open-access e-book by the Indian Academy of Sciences. I will now return to a longer book project that I had begun some years ago, but had put on hold to write the book on "experiments". In the longer book, I will attempt to use my research, in collaboration with a large number of students, on the Indian paper wasp Ropalidia marginata to pose the question "Can We Understand an Insect Society?" I will describe the questions we have asked, the experiments we have performed, and the answers we have obtained. I will also show how the answer to each question inevitably led to the next set of questions, resulting in an endless cycle of questions and answers. In the end, I will leave it to the reader to decide whether we have indeed understood something of the workings of this interesting insect society. I will also continue to spend about half my time writing my fortnightly column "More Fun Than Fun", taking the spirit and joy of science to a wider audience.

Recommended Reading

Gadagkar, Raghavendra (2001). The Social Biology of Ropalidia marginata: Toward Understanding the Evolution of Eusociality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- (2020 and continuing). "More Fun Than Fun" (column). The Wire Science. https://science.thewire.in/tag/more-fun-than-fun/.
- (2021). Experiments in Animal Behaviour: Cutting-Edge Research at Trifling Cost. Bangalore: Indian Academy of Sciences. E-book. https://www.ias.ac.in/public/Resources/Other_Publications/e-Publications/017/Experiments_in_Animal_Behaviour.pdf?v=1.1.

Publications from the Fellows' Library

Wiko Shorts