Browsing by Author "Babu, Suresh"

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Decision support systems based on scientific evidence: bibliometric networks of invasive Lantana camara
(Indian National Science Academy, 2021) Mishra, Preet; Prasad, Abhishek; Babu, Suresh; Yadav, Gitanjali
Extraction and analysis of useful knowledge from the vast amount of relevant published literature can add valuable insights to any research theme or area of interest. We introduce a simplifed bibliometric data analysis protocol for gaining substantial insights into research thematics, which can also serve as a handy practical skill for researchers while working from home. In this paper, we provide ways of developing a holistic research strategy using bibliometric-data driven approaches that integrate network analysis and information management, without the need for full paper access. This protocol is a comprehensive multi-modular pathway for analysis of metadata obtained from major scientifc publishing houses by the use of a Decision Support System (DSS). A simple case study on the invasive species Lantana camara has been presented as a proof-of-concept to show how one can implement this DSS based protocol. Some perspectives are also provided on how the outcomes can be used directly or scaled up for long term research interventions. We hope that this work will simplify exploratory literature review, and enable rational design of research objectives for scholars, as well as the development of comprehensive grant proposals that address gaps in research.
Ecological networks in urban forest fragments reveal species associations between native and invasive plant communities
(MDPI AG, 2022) Chauhan, Sonali; Yadav, Gitanjali; Babu, Suresh
Forest fragments are characteristic features of many megacities that have survived the urbanisation process and are often represented by unique assemblages of flora and fauna. Such woodlands are representations of nature in the city—often dominated by non-native and invasive species that coexist with resilient native congeners and purposefully introduced flora. These forest fragments also provide significant ecosystem services to urban society and therefore, understanding their compositional patterns is of considerable importance for conservation and management. In this work, we use a complex network approach to investigate species assemblages across six distinct urban forest fragments in the South Delhi Ridge area of the National Capital Territory, India. We generate bipartite ecological networks using conventional vegetation sampling datasets, followed by network partitioning to identify multiple cliques across the six forest fragments. Our results show that urban woodlands primarily form invasive–native associations, and that major invasive species, such as Prosopis juliflora and Lantana camara exclude each other while forming cliques. Our findings have implications for the conservation of these urban forests and highlight the importance of using network approaches in vegetation analysis.
Impact of coronavirus outbreaks on science and society: Insights from temporal bibliometry of SARS and COVID-19
(MDPI AG, 2021) Gupta, Ramya; Prasad, Abhishek; Babu, Suresh; Yadav, Gitanjali
A global event such as the COVID-19 crisis presents new, often unexpected responses that are fascinating to investigate from both scientific and social standpoints. Despite several documented similarities, the coronavirus pandemic is clearly distinct from the 1918 flu pandemic in terms of our exponentially increased, almost instantaneous ability to access/share information, offering an unprecedented opportunity to visualise rippling effects of global events across space and time. Personal devices provide “big data” on people’s movement, the environment and economic trends, while access to the unprecedented flurry in scientific publications and media posts provides a measure of the response of the educated world to the crisis. Most bibliometric (co-authorship, co-citation, or bibliographic coupling) analyses ignore the time dimension, but COVID-19 has made it possible to perform a detailed temporal investigation into the pandemic. Here, we report a comprehensive network analysis based on more than 20,000 published documents on viral epidemics, authored by over 75,000 individuals from 140 nations in the past one year of the crisis. Unlike the 1918 flu pandemic, access to published data over the past two decades enabled a comparison of publishing trends between the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and those of the 2003 SARS epidemic to study changes in thematic foci and societal pressures dictating research over the course of a crisis.
NEXCADE: Perturbation analysis for complex networks
(PLOS, 2012) Yadav, Gitanjali; Babu, Suresh
Recent advances in network theory have led to considerable progress in our understanding of complex real world systems and their behavior in response to external threats or fluctuations. Much of this research has been invigorated by demonstration of the ‘robust, yet fragile’ nature of cellular and large-scale systems transcending biology, sociology, and ecology, through application of the network theory to diverse interactions observed in nature such as plant-pollinator, seed-dispersal agent and host-parasite relationships. In this work, we report the development of NEXCADE, an automated and interactive program for inducing disturbances into complex systems defined by networks, focusing on the changes in global network topology and connectivity as a function of the perturbation. NEXCADE uses a graph theoretical approach to simulate perturbations in a user-defined manner, singly, in clusters, or sequentially. To demonstrate the promise it holds for broader adoption by the research community, we provide pre-simulated examples from diverse real-world networks including eukaryotic protein-protein interaction networks, fungal biochemical networks, a variety of ecological food webs in nature as well as social networks. NEXCADE not only enables network visualization at every step of the targeted attacks, but also allows risk assessment, i.e. identification of nodes critical for the robustness of the system of interest, in order to devise and implement context-based strategies for restructuring a network, or to achieve resilience against link or node failures. Source code and license for the software, designed to work on a Linux-based operating system (OS) can be downloaded at http://www.nipgr.res.in/nexcade_download.html. In addition, we have developed NEXCADE as an OS-independent online web server freely available to the scientific community without any login requirement at http://www.nipgr.res.in/nexcade.html.
Patterns of codon usage in plastidial genomes of ancient plants provide insights into evolution
(2015) Yadav, Manju; Babu, Suresh; Yadav, Gitanjali
Basal angiosperms are the first flowering plants that diverged from ancestral angiosperms, while magnoliids represent the oldest known angiosperms and are considered to retain the characteristics of more primitive angiosperms. Availability of the plastidial genomes from several members of both these classes of plants provides an opportunity to identify and understand large-scale genomic patterns in organelles of early angiosperms. In this work, chloroplast genomes from nine AT-rich basal angiosperm and magnoliid species were analyzed to unearth patterns, if any, in terms of codon bias and to identify factors responsible for the detected patterns. We were able to distinguish nine optimal codons in basal angiosperm chloroplasts and 18 in case of magnoliids. Our findings suggest mutational bias as the most predominant factor shaping codon usage patterns among the genomes examined, while gene expression, hydrophobicity and aromaticity, were found to have a limited but important effect on pattern determination.
Quantification of pollen viability in Lantana camara by digital holographic microscopy
(Cambridge University Press, 2023) Kumar, Vipin; Goyal, Nishant; Prasad, Abhishek; Babu, Suresh; Khare, Kedar; Yadav, Gitanjali
Pollen grains represent the male gametes of seed plants and their viability is critical for sexual reproduction in the plant life cycle. Palynology and viability studies have traditionally been used to address a range of botanical, ecological and geological questions, but recent work has revealed the importance of pollen viability in invasion biology as well. Here, we report an efficient visual method for assessing the viability of pollen using digital holographic microscopy (DHM). Imaging data reveal that quantitative phase information provided by the technique can be correlated with viability as indicated by the outcome of the colorimetric test. We successfully test this method on pollen grains of Lantana camara, a well-known alien invasive plant in the tropical world. Our results show that pollen viability may be assessed accurately without the usual staining procedure and suggest potential applications of the DHM methodology to a number of emerging areas in plant science.
Robustness through regime flips in collapsing ecological networks
(Springer Nature, 2018) Babu, Suresh; Yadav, Gitanjali
There has been considerable progress in our perception of organized complexity in recent years. Recurrent debates on the dynamics and stability of complex systems have provided several insights, but it is very difficult to find identifiable patterns in the relationship between complex network structure and dynamics. Traditionally an arena for theoreticians, much of this research has been invigorated by demonstration of alternate stable states in real world ecosystems such as lakes, coral reefs, forests and grasslands. In this work, we use topological connectivity attributes of eighty six ecological networks and link these with random and targeted perturbations, to obtain general patterns of behaviour of complex real world systems. We have analyzed the response of each ecological network to individual, grouped and cascading extinctions, and the results suggest that most networks are robust to loss of specialists until specific thresholds are reached in terms of network geodesics. If the extinctions persist beyond these thresholds, a state change or ‘flip’ occurs and the structural properties are altered drastically, although the network does not collapse. As opposed to simpler or smaller networks, we find larger networks to contain multiple states that may in turn, ensure long-term persistence, suggesting that complexity can endow resilience to ecosystems. The concept of critical transitions in ecological networks and the implications of these findings for complex systems characterized by networks are likely to be profound with immediate significance for ecosystem conservation, invasion biology and restoration ecology.