An
article was published recently in the
Biodiversity
Data Journal entitled, “Report of
Platythomisus
octomaculatus (
C. L. Koch, 1845) and
Platythomisus
sudeepi Biswas, 1977 from India (Araneae, Thomisidae)”. The
first species,
P. octomaculatus, is
being recorded after 120 years of its last report and its distribution has been
extended to
Assam in India from its previously known distributions in Java and
Sumatra. The article was published by Ms. Swara Yadav, a zoologist from Satara,
Maharashtra and
Dr. Vijay Anand Ismavel, the Medical Superintendent of the
Makunda Christian Leprosy & General Hospital (
www.makunda.in) in the
Karimganj District of Assam. Mr. Vinayak Patil from the College of Forestry in
Dapoli,
Maharashtra had also found another species in the same genus,
P. sudeepi, and this observation is also
discussed and reported in the same paper.
The Assam observation was possible through the activities of the “Makunda
Nature Club”. Dr. Vijay Anand Ismavel had been working in the Makunda hospital
(a mission hospital situated in a remote part of
Assam, bordering
Mizoram and
Tripura) since 1993. He started photographing and documenting biodiversity in
and around the campus in 2009 (shortly after suffering a heart attack). Over
the next 7 years, he documented over 5300 observations (of nearly 2000
different species) – all of them uploaded to
iNaturalist with over 10,000
supporting photographs -
http://www.inaturalist.org/people/8853. Most of them
are also posted to the different iNaturalist groups of
DiversityIndia.
In 2015,
Dr. Vijay Anand founded the “Makunda Nature Club” – this is formed with some
staff members (postgraduate teachers in Botany, Zoology and Biotechnology of
the Makunda Christian Higher Secondary School -
a school run by the Hospital Society with over 900 children studying
upto Class XII in Arts/Science) and about 30 student members. A seminar on
Forest Conservation was the first activity – tree-planting and a talk by Padma
Shri Jadav Payeng, the “Forest Man of India”. The club then organized a biodiversity
documentation workshop conducted by Mr. Rohit George from
Indian BiodiversityPortal (IBP) at Makunda and following this a “Makunda Nature Club” group was
also formed on IBP to enable members to upload photos from their cellphones
directly using the IBP App. Mr. Siddharth Kulkarni, an arachnologist from Pune
who is also the Country Coordinator for India on the
World Spider Catalog (he
is presently pursuing his Ph.D in Arachnology at the George Washington
University in the USA) then conducted a workshop on “Basic Arachnology” for the
Club members. A few months later, Mr. Siddharth Kulkarni and Ms. Swara Yadav
were invited to Makunda to spend time
with the Club members in doing a survey of spider biodiversity in the 350 acre
campus of the hospital. Members learnt about spider families, habits and how to
identify different species. The hospital purchased a stereo-microscope for the
Club so that identification of spiders could be done in the school science
laboratory. It was during this survey, that two specimens of
Platythomisus octomaculatus were found
(one by Antina Pasyad, a student from Class 8 of the school and the other by
Rejoice Gassah, who has joined the hospital as a full-time staff of the Club –
he was a student of Makunda’s School and is now pursuing his BA – both of them
belong to the Jaintia tribe and their families live in jungle villages close to
the hospital). One of the spiders had an egg-sac – members observed spider-lings
emerge and grow over several days till they dispersed. Further scientific work
on confirmation of the identification was done by Ms. Swara Yadav and Mr.
Siddharth Kulkarni leading to the publication.
The Makunda Nature Club is probably the only (or one of the few) nature
clubs in schools in India that inform and engage student members in actual professional
scientific research in surrounding forests.
This creates an awareness of the different life forms that exist, their
interdependence with each other and leads children to appreciate their beauty
as well as the need to conserve forests and all the species that forests
support. It also stimulates the curiosity of children and inculcates an
interest to learn more about the species that are observed and adds meaning to
the biology subjects that they study in class. A few children, having been
exposed to observation and documentation of biodiversity may decide to pursue
it as a career.
In 2015, Dr. Vijay Anand and some members of the Club found a male van
Hasselt Sunbird (Leptocoma brasiliana)
in surrounding forests – this species has now been found in the hospital campus
as well. This was the first time this species had been photographed in
present-day India and this observation was published in Indian Birds by Dr. Vijay Anand (along with Mr. Praveen Jayadevan,
a researcher from Bangalore). We hope that in the years to come, more such
discoveries would be made and citizen science initiatives such as the “Makunda
Nature Club” would make significant contributions to existing knowledge on
biodiversity.
