achievements_header
Congratulations to Dr. Anwesha Acharjee for successfully defending her thesis.
Thesis Title: Impact of extrinsic chemicals on the behavioural ecology of an Indian ant Diacamma indicum.
May 2026
Ms. Anwesha Acharjee has received a Travel Grant of £2500 from the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour (ASAB) to attend ECBB 2026 at Cambridge, UK.
April 2026
Mr. Ashish Thakur has received the prestigious The Developing Nations Research Grant by Animal Behavior Society (ABS) of $2000 for a project proposal as a part of his thesis.

Ms. Eshika Halder has received a Travel Grant of £800 from the North West European section of IUSSI to attend IUSSI 2026 Congress at Freiburg, Germany.

Mr. Sk Sayak has received a Travel Grant of £800 from the North West European section of IUSSI to attend IUSSI 2026 Congress at Freiburg, Germany.
March 2026
Ms. Anwesha Acharjee has received a Travel Grant of $1600 from the International Society for Behavioral Ecology (ISBE) to attend ISBE 2026 Congress at Turin, Italy.

Mr. Subhashis Halder has received a Travel Grant of £750 from the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour (ASAB) to attend ASAB Spring 2026 at Bristol, UK.

Mr. Ashish Thakur has received a Travel Grant of £550 from the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour (ASAB) to attend ASAB Spring 2026 at Bristol, UK.
February 2026
Mr. Subhashis Halder has received a Travel Grant of £500 from the British Ecological Society to attend ASAB Spring 2026 at Bristol, UK.
January 2026
Ms. Anwesha Acharjee has received a Travel Grant of INR 2,00,000 from the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF) to attend Annual Meeting of British Ecological Society (BES) 2025 at Edinburgh, Scotland.

Ms. Eshika Halder has received a Travel Grant of £450 from the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour (ASAB) to attend ASAB Winter Meet 2025 at Edinburgh, Scotland.
October 2025
Mr. Subhashis Halder has received the prestigious Student Research Award by American Society of Naturalists (ASN) of $2000 for a project proposal as a part of his thesis.
April 2025
Ms. Eshika Halder has received the prestigious JEDI (Justice Equity Diversity and Inclusion) award by Animal Behavior Society (ABS) of $2000 for a project proposal as a part of her thesis.
March 2025
Dr. Udipta Chakraboti has received the prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship (MSCA) for his Post-doctoral position at Insect Cognitive Neuroethology (ICON) in Institut de biologie paris seine (IBPS), Sorbonne University, CNRS, Paris, France.
February 2025
Ms. Eshika Halder gave Poster presentation at The Animal Behavior Live 2024: Annual online Conference. Watch here
November 2024
Congratulations to Dr. Manish Pathak for successfully defending his thesis.
Thesis Title: 'Ants’ Solutions to some Nature-Inspired Problems.
May 2024
Ms. Eshika Halder received the Best Poster Award in Understanding Behaviour 2023 for her work titled "Conquering the nest: Ants, intraspecific competition and fitness consequences."
June 2023
Congratulations to Dr. Kushankur Bhattacharyya for successfully defending his thesis.
Thesis Title: Influence of Monsoon on Nesting Behaviour: a Study on an Indian Ant, Diacamma indicum.
May 2023
Members of Behaviour and Ecology Group including members of Ant Lab organized a four phase outreach event spanning a period of over two months – Evobio2023; a fully funded event sponsored by European Society of Evolutionary Biology (ESEB), Animal Behavior Society (ABS), Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE) ,British Ecological Society (BES) and IISER Kolkata. The program aims to empower educators and young biologists to teach biology through the framework of evolution, with a focus on rural areas in Jharkhand and West Bengal, to cultivate a scientific mindset in both teachers and students. More details.
Mr. Manish Kumar Pathak has received a Graduate Student Travel Grant of $500 to attend Animal Behavior Society Conference 2023 at Portland, USA.
April 2023
Ms. Eshika Halder, a PhD student in the Ant Lab, has been selected for the prestigious Prime Minister Research Fellowship (PMRF).
Ms. Anwesha Acharjee has received the prestigious David Tuber Applied Animal Behaviour award by Animal Behavior Society (ABS) of $1995 for a project proposal as a part of her thesis.
Mr. Manish Kumar Pathakhas received the prestigious JEDI (Justice Equity Diversity and Inclusion) award by Animal Behavior Society (ABS) of $1500 for a project proposal as a part of his thesis.
Mr. Subhashis Halder has received the prestigious JEDI (Justice Equity Diversity and Inclusion) award by Animal Behavior Society (ABS) of $2000 for a project proposal as a part of his thesis.
March 2023
Mr. Manish Pathak has received the ABS Outreach Grant of $1000 from the Animal Behavior Society (ABS). This grant was given to support creative, high quality animal behavior outreach initiatives that are engaging and promise to have a big impact. More details
February 2023
Dr. Snigdha Mukhopadhyay has received the prestigious FYSSEN Foundation Postdoctoral Grant for her Post-doctoral position at Laboratoire d'Ethologie Expérimentale et Comparée in Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, Paris, France.
May 2022
Mr. Manish Pathak along with Dr. Bishwarup Paul, Dr. Rubina Mondal, Dr. Snigdha Mukhopadhyay, Kushankur Bhattacharyya, Sandip Murmu, Tista Lata, Subhashis Halder, Sourabh Biswas, Eshika Halder, Ashish Thakur have received ESEB Outreach Initiative Fund for the amount of 4000 EUR from the European Society of Evolutionary Biology (ESEB) to conduct outreach activities. They plan to use this to educate potential teachers and select underprivileged high school children regarding the subject of Evolution in West Bengal and Jharkhand. More details.
May 2022
Mr. Manish Pathak has received Small Grants for Outreach Program of $1000 from the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE) – an international body. This grant is given to conduct a workshop to school teachers to educate them regarding evolutionary Biology. Both theory and simple experiments that they can perform to teach the future generations. More details
April 2022
Dr. Snigdha Mukhopadhyay received the Best Poster Award titled "Visually impaired individuals lead the nestmates to the new nest during relcoation in an Indian ant" in International Conference on Insect Systematics and Evolutionary Biology, Punjab University.
February 2022
Mr. Manish Pathak has received the prestigious Rosemary Grant Advanced Award for working on the last chapter of his thesis that deals with rescue of ants trapped inside their nest! He will examine not only rescue strategies but also explore if more closely related female ants and immature individuals are preferentially rescued as they are more valuable for the colony. This international grant from the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE) consists of $3500 and has been given to an Indian student working in India for the first time in more than one decade of its existence. More details.
January 2022
Congratulations to Dr. Snigdha Mukhopadhyay for successfully defending her thesis.
Thesis Title: Navigation in the context of relocation in a tandem-running ant Diacamma indicum.
December 2021
Mr. Manish Pathak, a PhD student in Ant lab has received the DST- AWSAR-Best Story Award 2020 for his short story in Hindi entitled " Chitiyon ka traffic jam?" In this write up he explains how ants resolve traffic jams based on the finding from his experiments in our lab. The story, which is presented as a conversation between a small boy and an ant together with the cartoon he had made is very interesting and can be found here.
February 2021
British Ecological Society has approved training and travel grant to Mr. Manish Pathak to attend "ICTP- School on collective Animal Behaviour, at University of Havana, Cuba.
August 2020
Dr. Bishwarup Paul gave oral presentation at The Animal Behavior Live 2020: Annual online Conference. Watch here
August 2020
Ms. Snigdha Mukhopadhyay and Mr. Kushankur Bhattacharya gave oral presentation at 20th ANeT meeting at Kasetsart University, Bankok, Thailand.
November 2019
Congratulations to Dr. Bishwarup Paul for successfully defending his thesis.
Thesis title: Facets of brood theft in a tropical ant Diacamma indicum.
October 2019
Congratulations to Dr. Anoop K for successfully defending his thesis.
Thesis title: Characterisation of recruitment during relocation in an Indian ant.
May 2019
Ms. Snigdha Mukhopadhyay gave a poster presentation on her work at the British Ecological Society (BES) Annual Meeting 2018, held at Birmingham, United Kingdom.
December 2018
Ms. Snigdha Mukhopadhyay received the travel grant from British Ecological Society (BES) for attending the BES Annual Meeting 2018, at Birmingham, United Kingdom.
December 2018
Mr. Bishwarup Paul gave a poster presentation on his work at the European Conference on Behavioural Biology (ECBB), held at Liverpool, United Kingdom.
August 2018
Mr. Bishwarup Paul received the award for best oral presentation at International Conference for Zoological Sciences and Ants (11th ANeT) 2017, held at Punjabi University, Patiala, India.
October 2017
Dr. Sumana Annagiri and Mr. Anoop K presented their work at Behaviour 2017, held at Estoril, Portugal.
July-August 2017
Congratulations to Dr. Swetashree Kolay for successfully defending her thesis.
Thesis title: Nesting Biology and Relocation Dynamics in an Indian Ant Diacamma indicum.
February 2017
Mr. Kushankur Bhattacharyya received the award for best oral presentation at Young Ecologists Talk and Interact (YETI) 2017, held at Tezpur University, Assam, India.
January 2017
Ms. Swetashree Kolay gave a poster presentation on her work at the 16th congress of International Society for Behavioral Ecology, held at Exeter, United Kingdom.
July-August 2016
Mr. Anoop K attended the 16th Ant Course, held at Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique.
July-August 2016
Ms. Swetashree Kolay gave an oral presentation on her work at the 11th Ecology and Behaviour meeting, held at Toulouse, France.
May 2015
Dr. Rajbir Kaur received the prestigious Humboldt Research Fellowship for Postdoctoral Researchers. Congratulations to her for this achievement and we wish her all the best for the future.
January 2015
Event organized by IMSc “Science at the sabha” featuring Prof. Sumana Annagiri was covered by The Hindu and The times of India.
February 2025
An outreach initiative from the Behaviour and Ecology Group of IISER Kolkata i.e., EvoBio2023 has been covered by a local newspaper, Ei Samay by The Times Group.
May 2023
IISER Kolkata monthly newsletter highlighted the recent success of the students from our lab for procuring multiple international research grants for their project proposal along with our recent outreach programme i.e., Evobio2023 .
April 2023
An interview of Purbayan Ghosh and Prof Sumana Annagiri based on a recent publication from our lab (Ghosh, P. & Annagiri, S., 2023). has been featured in Myrmecological News Blog discussing the latest findings from the article.
February 2023
Publication from our lab Karunakaran, A., Ghosh, P. & Annagiri, S. (2021). has been featured on science news column of Current Science .
February 2021
A podcast featuring Prof.Sumana Annagiri "OutsideIn: Running with Ants with Prof. Sumana Annagiri" was published in The Bangalore Life Science Cluster (BLiSC).
August 2020
An Article featuring Prof.Sumana Annagiri on the seies "WIISER Spotlight" titled "With curiosity driven science, towards blue-sky research" was published in Cogito-The Thought Capsule- IISER-Kolkata.
June 2020
In these Covid times when we are all confined to our home, have you wondered what constitutes a home for other organisms? In this study published in Research Matters Kushankur Bhattacharya a IntPhD student and Sumana explored the nest architecture of a Indian ant and found that they live in a simple single chamber nest that does not change significantly across seasons.
May 2020
A podcast featuring Prof.Sumana Annagiri on the seies "Joy of science" (Episode 147) was published in Research Matters.
November 2019
Our publication on mechanism of brood theft in D. indicum (Paul & Annagiri 2018) was discussed in an article published in Anandabazar Patrika (in Bengali).
April 2018
Our publication on mechanism of brood theft in D. indicum (Paul & Annagiri 2018) was discussed in an article published in Mathrubhumi (English version and Malayalam version).
March 2018
Our publication on mechanism of brood theft in D. indicum (Paul & Annagiri 2018) was discussed in an article published in The Hindu.
March 2018
Our publication on mechanism of brood theft in D. indicum (Paul & Annagiri 2018) was discussed in an article published in The Telegraph.
March 2018
Our publication on intraspecific brood theft in D. indicum (Paul et al. 2016) was discussed in an article published in Livemint: Mint on Sunday.
April 2017
Work from our lab was highlighted in an article regarding the Advances in Life Sciences conference held in IISER-Kolkata. The article was published in The Economic Times.
January 2017
Our publication on intraspecific brood theft in D. indicum (Paul et al. 2016) was discussed in an article published in Research Matters.
January 2017
2026
Frontiers in Modern Biology (FIMB) 2026 - IISER Kolkata, India.
Participants: Anwesha Acharjee, Chandrani Poddar, Prakriti Paul, Madhulika Rakshit.

ASAB Spring Meeting 2026 - Bristol, UK.
Participant: Subhashis Halder.

Integrative Conservation Conference 2026 - University of Georgia, USA
Participant: Paromita Khan (Online).
2025
Behaviour 2025 (38th International Ethological Congress & ASAB Summer Meet) - Kolkata, India.
Participants: Anwesha Acharjee, Subhashis Halder, Eshika Halder, Ashish Thakur, Sk Sayak.

BES Annual Meeting 2025 - Edinburgh, Scotland.
Participants: Anwesha Acharjee, Eshika Halder.

ASAB Winter Meeting 2025 - Edinburgh, Scotland.
Participant: Eshika Halder.

ISEB 6 - IISER Berhampur, India.
Participants: Ashish Thakur, Sk Sayak, Paromita Khan.

Nature Walking like a Scientist - Funded by ASAB. - IISER Kolkata, India.
Mentors: Dr. Udipta Chakraborti, Eshika Halder, Ashish Thakur, Sk Sayak, Paromita Khan.

National Science Day - IISER Kolkata, India.
Participants: Eshika Halder, Subhashis Halder, Sk Sayak.
2024
Vigyan Pratibha Teacher Training Workshop - IISER Kolkata, India.
Volunteer: Ashish Thakur.

Inter IISER Ecology Meet - IISER Tirupati, India.
Participants: Dr. Udipta Chakraborti, Eshika Halder, Ashish Thakur, Sk Sayak.

Animal Behavior Live
Participant: Eshika Halder.

National well being conclave - IIT Hyderabad, India.
Participant: Anwesha Acharjee.

European Conference for Behavioral Biology (ECBB) - Zurich, Switzerland.
Participant: Subhashis Halder.

Talk your Thesis: India Science Festival (ISF) - Pune.
Participant: Anwesha Acharjee.
2023
Animal Behavior Conference 2023 - Portland, USA
Participant: Anwesha Acharjee (Online).

59th Annual Meeting of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) 2023 - Coimbatore, India
Participant: Anwesha Acharjee.

Understanding Behaviour 2023 - IISER Kolkata, India.
Participants: Anwesha Acharjee, Sandip Murmu, Eshika Halder, Subhashis Halder.
2022
International Conference on Insect Systematics and Evolutionary Biology, Punjab University
Participants: Dr. Bishwarup Paul, Dr. Snigdha Mukhopadhyay, Kushankur Bhattacharyya
2020
Animal Behavior Live: Annual Online Conference
Participant: Bishwarup Paul.

The 57th Annual Conference of the Animal Behavior Society (2020 ABS Virtual Confernce)
Participants: Bishwarup Paul, Purbayan Ghosh.
2019
FIMB 2020 - IISER Kolkata, India.
Participant: Purbayan Ghosh.

ISEB International Conference - Bangalore, India.
Participant: Kushankur Bhattacharyya.

ISEB National Conference - Bangalore, India.
Participants: Manish Pathak, Purbayan Ghosh.

ANeT International Conference 2019 - Bangkok, Thiland.
Participants: Kushankur Bhattacharyya, Snigdha Mukhopadhyay.

Workshop on Genomics - IISER Tirupati, India.
Participant: Anwesha Acharjee.

Training in Bioacoustics - IISER Tirupati, India.
Participant: Kushankur Bhattacharyya.

Understanding Behaviour 2019 - IISER Kolkata, India.
Participants: Bishwarup Paul, Snigdha Mukhopadhyay, Kushankur Bhattacharyya, Sandip Murmu, Manish Pathak, Sachin Suresh, Supraja Rajagopal.
2018
BES (British Ecological Society) Annual Meeting - Birmingham, United Kingdom.
Participant: Snigdha Mukhopadhyay.

9th European Conference on Behavioural Biology (ECBB) - Liverpool, United Kingdom.
Participant: Bishwarup Paul.

2nd DST-SERB School on Chemical Ecology - IISc, India.
Participant: Snigdha Mukhopadhyay.

Frontiers in Modern Biology (FIMB) - IISER Kolkata, India.
Participants: Bishwarup Paul, Kushankur Bhattacharyya.
2017
Behaviour 2017 - Estoril, Portugal.
Participants: Dr. Sumana Annagiri, Anoop K.

International Conference in Zoological Sciences and Ants (11th ANeT) - Punjabi University, India.
Participants: Dr. Sumana Annagiri, Bishwarup Paul, Snigdha Mukhopadhyay, Kushankur Bhattacharyya.

Young Ecologists Talk and Interact (YETI) - Tezpur University, India.
Participants: Bishwarup Paul, Snigdha Mukhopadhyay, Kushankur Bhattacharyya.

1st DST-SERB School on Chemical Ecology - NCBS, India.
Participant: Bishwarup Paul.

Advances in Life Sciences - IISER-Kolkata, India.
Participants: Swetashree Kolay, Snigdha Mukhopadhyay.

Shoot for Science (Workshop by National Geographic) - NCBS, India.
Participant: Kushankur Bhattacharyya.
2016
16th congress of International Society for Behavioral Ecology - Exeter, United Kingdom.
Participant: Swetashree Kolay.

Ant Course - Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique.
Participant: Anoop K.

2nd School on Population Genetics & Evolution - ICTS, India.
Participant: Swetashree Kolay.

Speciation and the Web of Life - IISER-Thiruvananthapuram, India.
Participant: Bishwarup Paul.

India - Behaviour Ecology and Evolution (I-BEE) - Corbett National Park, India.
Participants: Swetashree Kolay, Anoop K., Bishwarup Paul, Snigdha Mukhopadhyay, Kushankur Bhattacharyya.
2015
11th Ecology & Behaviour meeting - Toulouse, France.
Participant: Swetashree Kolay.

Frontiers in Modern Biology (FIMB) - IISER Kolkata, India.
Participants: Swetashree Kolay, Bishwarup Paul.

National Conference on Ethology and Evolution (NCEE) (39th Annual Meeting of Ethological Society of India) - IISER Mohali, India.
Participants: Swetashree Kolay, Anoop K., Bishwarup Paul.
2014
SERB School in Neuroscience, 8th Edition (Brain Circuits) - IISER-Pune, India.
Participant: Bishwarup Paul.
2013
Young Ecologists Talk & Interact (YETI) - Nagaland University, India.
Participant: Swetashree Kolay.

Frontiers in Modern Biology (FIMB) - IISER Kolkata, India.
Participants: Swetashree Kolay, Anoop K., Bishwarup Paul.

Being Social - IISc, India.
Participant: Swetashree Kolay.

School on Networks in Biology, Social Sciences and Engineering - IISc, India.
Participant: Swetashree Kolay.
2012
Frontiers in Modern Biology (FIMB) - IISER Kolkata, India.
Participant: Swetashree Kolay
2011
Frontiers in Modern Biology (FIMB) - IISER Kolkata, India.
Participant: Swetashree Kolay.
2010
Animal Behaviour Symposium - IISER Kolkata, India.
Participant: Swetashree Kolay