Globally, rapid urbanization along with poor garbage management has positively influenced stray dogs populations. This has posed a significant public health challenge, particularly in the spread of diseases such as rabies. India currently harbours over 17 million free-ranging dogs, spanning across its urban, peri-urban, and rural landscapes. Although India has pledged to launch a mass vaccination program against them, insufficient information is available on the distribution and demographics of dog population within urban and peri-urban regions of India.
We first studied seasonal variation in stray-dog numbers in a peri-urban landscape of India. We then examined how resource distribution patterns influenced dog distribution.

The study was conducted in a 4km2 area in the outskirts of Bangalore city. Dog population density did not vary between summer ( June 2018: 262 ± 12.76) and winter (December 2018: 322 ±15.67). Male-female sex ratios were also similar between the two seasons (1.15 in summer and 1.37 in winter).

A complete spatial randomness test showed that the dog distribution was highly clustered, and these clusters seems to be associated different sources of food. Through Euclidean distance method, we found that stray-dogs had a greater preference towards various eateries (bakeries, food and meat shops) compared to garbage dumps in the area, owing to the quality of resource. We will discuss our results with respect to poor waste-management and city-planning strategies that have led to increase in stray-dog population in this peri-urban neighbourhood.

Bird pollinators are predicted to facilitate extensive pollen carryover and widespread outcrossing due to their considerable mobility, large body sizes, and less rigorous grooming techniques compared to insects. Bird abundance, behaviour and pollination characteristics are anticipated to vary with certain ecological factors such as nectar resource availability. We assessed bird-pollinated herb Anigozanthos humilis subsp. humilis across three habitats defined by the volume of available co-flowering resources and the consequences this had for bird abundance, bird visitation to A. humilis, its fruit set, outcrossing and offspring paternity. Point counts were used to determine bird abundance across the three habitats. Bird visits to A. humilis in each habitat were monitored using motion-triggered cameras and a minimum of 30 plants were surveyed in each habitat. Four microsatellite markers were used to genotype three adult cohorts (n = 139 total) and 211 seeds collected from 23 different plants (min 7 plants per habitat). Multi-locus genotypes were used to determine genetic diversity, estimate mating system parameters and assign paternity. Bird abundance positively correlated with the volume of bird-pollinated floral resources. Bird visits, fruit set, outcrossing rates and instances of multiple paternity were not associated with co-flowering floral resources. Outcrossing rates were moderately high overall at 81%, levels of multiple paternity were surprisingly low in all three habitats. Bird pollinators appear to facilitate pollination of A. humilis independently of the co-flowering floral resources available. These results provide insight into the relationship between co-flowering and plant mating systems in the South West Australian Floristic Region.