User:PurvaiAranya/sandbox

= Soumya Prasad =

Soumya Prasad (born 1978) is a tropical ecologist from Bangalore, currently working in Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her work focuses on animal behaviour, seed dispersal, and garbage impacts.

Work
Prasad's PhD research was based on a discovery she made in Rajaji Nature Reserve, Dehradun, about the animals that eat Amla. It was assumed that Hornbill birds eat the Amla fruit, but Prasad learnt that it was actually the Chital and Barking Deer that ate Amla and dispersed its seeds. Since these animals cannot reach the fruit themselves, they depend on the Langurs that shake the branches of the trees and drop the fruit to the ground. Prasad explains, “Deer tend to follow Langurs in the forest during the six-month-long Amla fruiting season from October to March. The Langur drop the fruits and the Deer eat them".

It took Prasad many years to publish these results, because they were contradictory to previous research done in the field that suggested that deer only destroy large seeds like Amla instead of dispersing them.