Spotlighting the contributions of our 2025 in-office interns
By Sophie Minoosh Bernstein –Biodiversity Conservation
This summer, the Biodiversity and Conservation team at Keystone Foundation welcomed nine in-office interns from fields including Botany, Wildlife Biology, and Biology. Representing educational levels from high school to master’s programs, they joined from Kotagiri, Coonoor, Bangalore, Nagapattinam, Delhi, and the USA. Their projects enriched biodiversity databases, conservation publications, and field-based research.
Studying the Great Indian Hornbill – Devadharshini Singaravelu
Devadharshini Singaravelu is pursuing her M.Sc. in Wildlife Biology at A.V.C. College of Arts and Sciences (Autonomous), Mayiladuthurai. She worked closely with the Human-Wildlife Interaction team to complete a social survey on the vulnerable Great Indian Hornbill. Great Indian Hornbills are essential to the ecological balance of local forests as they disperse seeds across their habitats. To understand local people’s understanding of hornbills, including local knowledge, trees used for nesting and feeding, and population assessments, villagers of all ages were interviewed.
The Hornbill Social Survey focused its efforts on three areas: Coonoor, Aracode, and Konavakarai. After data collection, Devadharshini performed data entry and analysis, completing the project. Leader of the Human-Wildlife Interaction team, Chandrasekar Das, commented that Devadharshini contributed greatly to the project through “responsible data collection in the field”.
Botany Research in the Nilgiris – Providence College Interns
Ammer Pannu is pursuing her bachelor’s degree in biology at Ashoka University, Haryana. She collaborated with the Apiculture, Bees, and Pollinators team, bringing Keystone’s Pollinator Portal to fruition. Ammer focused on secondary research regarding bees and produced blog posts discussing bee vision and other types of pollinators, such as flies and butterflies. Ammer remarked that this internship helped her “better understand the pollinators of the Nilgiris and their relationship to local communities”. Her work is now featured on the Pollinator Portal, which can be found here: https://pollinators.keystone-foundation.org/.
A Summer of Learning and Impact
We were also delighted to have five undergraduate interns studying Botany from Providence College, Coonoor. Dhakshayini S, Nancy J, Divya L, Priyadharshini P, and Jenitta R. supported work in our native species nursery. They also collected data on montane grasslands at higher elevations, which will later be included in a publication on Plants of the Nilgiri Upper Area. These botany students worked on data sheets, compiling phenology and morphology data, enhancing their understanding of plants commonly found in the Nilgiris. We are grateful for their contributions!
We thank all our interns this summer for their excellent work and dedication.
Students of Providence College are working on phenology and morphology data sheets for the Nilgiri Upper Area.
