Dr Yadugiri Tiruvaimozhi is an ecologist fascinated by plants and their interactions with things around them, especially plant associations with fungal and bacterial partners and enemies in the soil. The primary focus of her research is to understand the consequences of climate change and other anthropogenic stressors such as eutrophication and invasion on plant, microbial and other communities, their interactions, and ecosystem processes they mediate. She is also interested in exploring long-term ecological data to gain insights into various ecological communities, their functioning and responses to factors such as changing climate and land-use patterns.

Dr Tiruvaimozhi’s doctoral work at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, and post-doctoral work at the Centre for Ecological Sciences, IISc, focussed on studying the impacts of global change on plant-microbial interactions using field-based experiments and observations in the Nilgiris in the Western Ghats and Spiti Valley in the Trans-Himalaya. Subsequently, as a Research Associate at the Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF), she contributed to synthesising information on long-term ecological monitoring in India, and exploring ways to use NCF’s long-term ecological datasets to address fundamental questions spanning diverse ecosystems.

Apart from research, she enjoys popular science writing, listening to Carnatic music, and trekking. She has also been a long-time student of Sanskrit, of both literary and technical works.

Dr Yadugiri Tiruvaimozhi’s research interests include plant-soil-microbe interactions, mycorrhizal ecology, global change ecology, carbon and nutrient cycling and ecosystem functioning, and long-term ecology.

1. Tiruvaimozhi, YV, Sankaran, M. (2019) Soil respiration in a tropical montane grassland ecosystem is largely heterotroph-driven and increases under simulated warming. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 276- 277:107619.

2. Koerner, SE et al. (including Tiruvaimozhi YV). (2018) Resolving variation in herbivore effects on plant biodiversity – change in dominance as a global mechanism. Nature Ecology and Evolution 2:1925–1932.

3. Tiruvaimozhi, YV, Varma, V, Sankaran, M. (2018) Nitrogen fixation ability explains leaf chemistry and ar- buscular mycorrhizal responses to fertilization. Plant Ecology 219:391–401.

4. Tiruvaimozhi, YV, Bagchi, S, Sankaran, M. Response of mycorrhizae to herbivory and soil moisture in a semiarid grazing ecosystem. Preprint.

Dr Yadugiri Tiruvaimozhi served as an Instructor for a Community Ecology course for PhD students at the Nature Conservation Foundation, Bangalore. She taught modules on Mutualism and Facilitation, Food Chains, Food Webs and Trophic Cascades, and Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning. She has also served as a Teaching Assistant for the course on Basic Statistics, Postgraduate Programme in Wildlife Biology and Conservation at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore. She has mentored several undergraduate and graduate students, including summer interns, BTech and MSc (Honours) project students.