TIGER DIALOGUES SESSION IV- Traversing Tiger-Land on Foot: De-coding Tiger Biology and Behaviour

Powerful, yet very vulnerable to hunting and snaring. Highly adapted to diverse eco-climatic conditions – ranging from Siberia to Tropical Asia and Mangroves to hot, arid zones-- but still sensitive to perturbations caused by land use change and habitat fragmentation. Tigers, in contrast to leopards, are less adept at living on the margins of cities and in disturbed habitats, but they have nonetheless dispersed over hundreds of kilometers through agricultural landscapes and are even known to breed and raise young in sugarcane fields! Tigers maintain extremely complex social lives even though they are predominantly solitary. How do we make sense of these apparent contradictions, and what do they tell us about strategies and actions that are needed to enable the species' survival into the next century? Undoubtedly, important clues and answers lie in the species' biology and behaviour. In the fourth session of the tiger dialogues, a panel of experts will direct our gaze to aspects of the species’ life history to understand how they have adapted to ever-changing landscapes, and to the limits of behavioral adaptation, beyond which the species’ demography is likely to be adversely impacted. How do attributes and stimuli from the external environment drive diverse aspects of behaviour – foraging, breeding, territory maintenance, dispersal, and space use? How do interactions with other carnivores, the distribution, and the occurrence of herbivores (prey species), in combination with environmental factors, explain tiger space use? And how do tigers calibrate their relationships with habitats, prey, and competitors in response to exposure to humans, land use change, and other anthropogenic perturbations? We will explore these and other questions through the eyes of path-breaking naturalists and conservation scientists who have walked extensively in the footsteps of tigers. Having painstakingly studied their ways, their habitats, the biology of their prey species, and assessed how the species navigates human-dominated landscapes, the panelists will paint an intricate picture of how tigers both shape their environment, and how their behavior and populations are shaped by the environment. We will also be regaled by stories from diverse field sites from near and afar, that will offer us more insights into the world of tigers. These conversations will ultimately extend our understanding of the extraordinary challenges that tigers have faced, and convey messages about what needs to urgently be done to perpetuate the future of this apex predator in India and beyond.