Renee Borges - Session 02, 2022-02-17

(00:00:27) A typical day in the field during her PhD Renee describes how she conducted focal animal sampling of the Malabar Giant squirrels, keeping a full day record of the squirrel's activities. Individual squirrels can be identified through distinctive markings on their face and body. Spent 12 hours in the field every day, and it was often rainy; she used Rite in the Rain waterproof notebooks. Would transcribe her field notes after dinner with carbon paper every day, so that she had a backup copy and would regularly send one set of copies to Bombay for safekeeping, since there were no computers at that time. She followed 10–12 individuals for the whole year. Also collected the plants they feed on; they were very selective about which plant parts they ate. “Squirrels were superb chemists”. Primus stoves and box ovens to dry the collected materials, and weighing balances that were very sensitive for that time –milligram weights that had to placed very carefully with a tweezer. Deep observations about Giant squirrel ecology and behaviour. A time before GPS, and so she had marked 5000 trees using a compass and a map; gridded the whole area into 50 m square blocks. “Squirrel soap opera every day!” She remarks about how the squirrels were accustomed to their presence, and about the interesting behaviours she observed, especially the interspecies interactions.

(00:16:34) Back to the US Her Maytag fellowship was over, so after finishing her field work, she took up a TA position at the University of Miami. She recalls the football players - the Gators, who would come to class wearing their football gear trying to intimidate the instructors, and how that didn’t work on her. She also got a grant from the Chicago Zoological society to pay a data operator to help input the reams of behavioural data. She remembers the big Mainframe computers at that time, and recalls how one had to really plan and know what you wanted to do with the data, how you wanted to analyse it because you could not waste the time you were allotted at the mainframe. They also had computer consultants who helped them with using the computers.

(00:20:19) The PC revolution and bringing an IBM to Bombay Towards the end of her PhD in 1989, the PC revolution was happening in America. IBM and Apple were competing for PCs and selling them at the University for cutthroat prices, and she brought one back with her. It would have been one of the first computers in Bombay. She mentions that Rajiv Gandhi was Prime Minister and at that time, there were no taxes or custom duties on computers and accessories, so it was easy to bring it in. She recalls having to build a voltage converter as it ran on a different voltage, for the entire set – printer, monitor and CPU. She wrote most of the papers from her PhD from Bombay, and sent them to journals as hard copies by air mail. She especially remembers a software to make figures called Cricket Graph – one of the first software ever developed for this. It came in Floppy Disks, and she still has a box full of them as keepsakes. She also audited a course on multivariate analysis at the Psychology Dept before coming back, and also mentions the software SPSS. She noted how one had to be very clear in their thinking and writing in those days – no spellcheck and autocorrect, and which is why she encouraged her first students to also learn how to do complex calculations by hand.

(00:30:59) Cladistics She remembers how Jay Savage brought a team of his students to test out a workbook on the concepts of cladistics, which was just coming into vogue as a field. He was a famous herpetologist, and she recalls how useful the experience of being a guinea pig for the workbook was. She also remembers David Hillis. She later incorporated some of the exercises into a Diploma course she had developed on Conservation Biology at the BNHS. She notes how it was an exciting time, to be at the cusp of revolutions, in computers and in ecology and see the field developing before her eyes.

(00:35:36) Second US Fish and Wildlife Service Grant After coming back to India, she applied for another USFWS grant and she recalls David Ferguson, an officer who had worked with India for many years, who was helpful during the applications. That grant was run through the Wildlife Institute of India (WII). She had an offer from John Sale to join WII and taught a regular two weeks course there on community ecology from 1990 onwards for several years. But she didn't want to join there permanently, as she had seen some of the wildlife–forestry divide and did not think that was her cup of tea. Getting the grant again involved pushing papers, for which she stayed at the Young Women’s Christian Association in Delhi. She remembers going to the Central Government Offices Complex (CGO) which houses the Ministry of the Environment and Forests, for the paperwork. In December 1989 or 90, she got a call from the Ministry saying “Here’s a Christmas present for you - we've just signed the agreement for your grant to come through”. She mentions that being persistent worked. She got her first PhD students, Hema Somanathan and Subhash Mali during this time, and they were registered at Bombay University. She notes that this was the time when they conducted a lot of surveys across the Western and Eastern Ghats to study the distribution of the Giant Squirrel, and were able to establish that the so-called sub species in the Dangs was extinct, as it had been hunted out. They tried to suggest alternative meats like poultry, but somehow it didn’t catch on there. She talks about the colour cline of the Giant Squirrel – they are much darker in the south and were almost pale or beige in the Dangs, but then they went extinct in the Dangs. At this time, she also wanted to choose another site to do another replicate of her PhD work, and decided on Mookambika Wildlife Sanctuary, but soon after logistics were in place, they found out that the squirrels were being hunted there and could not continue their work. So, they went back to Bhimashankar. Hema started work on pollination and that's how Renee also got into that field. She notes that they were able to build a much stronger relationship with the villagers, which has continued till date. They developed a computer centre and a library in the village later. She notes that they rotated through villages for employing field assistants to make sure that it did not seem that only a few families were being favoured, and thus to avoid fights. She says that they had learnt quite a bit about village dynamics by now. She recalls that when the wife of one their field assistants became head of the panchayat, she got a call from them. She mentions that she never did it as a chore or a mission, but just that she got so easily integrated, that it was natural to do all these things. She also picked up the local dialect – “at least enough to fire somebody!”. She remembered a radio interview that she had to do it in Marathi, and how that was hysterical (because she didn't speak Marathi very well), and how everyone had a good laugh about it. She feels that all field experiences, even later, have been a lot of fun and she felt integrated with the community. [00:42:26 -00:43:46 - Restricted Access. Contact archives@ncbs.res.in for details] (00:51:32) On “Women in Science" Renee never faced any issues in this regard, which is why she doesn’t participate in Women in Science events. Even in her lab – she thinks of everyone as just people. She believes it was her upbringing, and that she never thought that she was not capable of changing a tyre or fixing something. She recalls how she once barged into Prakash Javadekar's house, who was the Minister for Environment and Forests, and CES funding was delayed. She realises that there are many areas where people have had a very rough time, and fully sympathises with that, and says that perhaps she has been fortunate in this regard. She mentions how her forthrightness got her into trouble at one point in her career, when she was asked to leave the BNHS, and there was a legal case against her. At that time, some people told her that it was because she was a woman, and she even got many letters in support, but she was still not ready to believe that – she still thinks it was just her calling a spade a spade that got her into hot water. She recalls how it was a rough three years, and how upset her husband was at that time, and that he might have kept some of those letters of support. But she was busy, and did not want to pay attention to all this – “because if you let yourself believe that you are a victim, then everything becomes overdramatised and seen in that light.” She feels that she has seen the “victim card” being played too often, and honestly thinks that unless women can think of men as platonic friends, there will always be this issue. She never felt or considered herself different from men in any way.

(1:00:40) Joining the Centre for Ecological Sciences CES had not advertised for 10 years since Raman Sukumar had joined. The moment they did, she applied. At this point she remembers Shahin Ansari, one of the students from the diploma course at BNHS that she taught, who is an eminent invasive species biologist in Hawaii now. Renee also developed a course in Science Communication for the Xaviers College of Communications, perhaps the first of its kind in the country. It was an evening course, and she was involved with it for three years. She was contacted by Jane Swamy to create the course. She recalls using copies of Discover magazine which she had brought with her from the US as a teaching tool for the course. At IISc, there were nine shortlisted candidates for the CES Assistant Professor position. Renee remembers that Milind Watve was also on the list. G Padmanabhan was the Director of IISc at that time. Renee mentions that Rohini Balakrishnan also did her interview at the same time, perhaps via a phone call as she was in Germany then. It was just the two of them (Renee and Rohini) that were selected after a huge gap of ten years. Renee didn't want to be associated with any other place, and had respectfully declined other offers like WII. She recalls that for the first two years, they didn’t have any lab space, and she had so much material that she had brought with her. She wrote her first DST grant soon after joining CES.

(1:10:00) The journey that led to fig wasps When she joined CES, Renee was still working on squirrels. Then she got a DST project to study Mussaenda frondosa floral displays, and became interested in ant-plants soon after. Doyle McKey, who was on her PhD thesis committee and working on ant-plants in Cameroon, had a student who came as a post-doc to India, and she started the work with him and the CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research) in France. His wife, Martine Hossaert worked on fig wasps and they wrote a joint Indo-French project on fig wasps. This was also the time when she collaborated with Jean-Marie Bessière, an organic chemist who specialised in perfumes, and that’s how she got into chemical ecology. Her work in the field of visual ecology began with Hema's work on pollination. Renee recalls the discovery of a carpenter bee that was pollinating at night. She had presented the Mussaenda work at the Invertebrate Vision conference, and got into those circles. An Indo-Swedish grant came out of that and that’s how they discovered new things about nocturnal bees. She mentions her associations with the Organisation for Tropical Studies and the ATBC, and that she has visited a lot of places from dragon in Komodo to Amazonia as an ATBC Council member, and as part of chemical ecology conferences including the Gordon conferences. Renee says that she now has many intersecting scientific circles that bring in different sensory biology perspectives. She always wanted to go into new areas – and now she is dabbling in bioengineering and has collaborated with a granular physicist for studying termite mounds and potter wasp nests.

(1:16:55) “Bhimashankar is special” Here Renee mentions that Bhimashankar holds a special place in her heart. Some memories that have stayed with her are using the bioluminescent fungi on twigs as night lights – whole trees would glow – and sambhar deer stags bellowing outside her window. She remembers the time there was leopard sitting on the tent platform outside her room. She talks again about the very long-standing relationship with the people there, and that she has fought many battles to try and keep Bhimashankar safe. She was also on the Western Ghats Ecology Experts Panel put together by Madhav Gadgil, and she talks about that being a great learning experience, especially interacting with activists. Renee points out that people in Bhimashankar are warkaris who don't eat a lot of meat, and how Bhimashankar is a collection of sacred groves, and therefore the Giant Squirrels were not hunted there. Similarly, Magod, her other field site was also inhabited by the Bhat community who were vegetarians. She contrasts this to Mookambika, where they later found out that there was also an illegal bison meat trade going to the UAE. According to her, this is why the culture of the people also has to be taken into consideration when choosing a field site. [01:20:36 - 01:21:07 - Restricted Access. Contact archives@ncbs.res.in for details]

(1:23:15 to 1:29:00) Concluding thoughts – pollinator studies was an idea ahead of its time, and the need for ecology textbooks with examples from India Renee was convinced very early on that pollination was on the decline, and tried very hard to get funding from the Ford Foundation, but did not get it. That was in the early 2000s, so her idea was a decade and a half too early, she feels. Now there are big projects on pollinators and pollinator services. At that time, she was talking about preserving interactions between species, but people were focused on single species. Now everyone knows that you can't save one without the other, but at that time she was a lone voice. She is now on the IUCN Wild Bee Specialist Group trying to influence policy, and is also trying to get the Indian Council of Agricultural Research to introduce pollination as a regular subject in agricultural universities. She is also writing and editing several books as the Chief Editor for the Cambridge and IISc Press series on Ecology and Evolution. Hari Sridhar is writing one on classic papers in ecology, Kavita Isvaran and Suhel Qader are writing one on research design and Uma Ramakrishnan on Conservation Biology. She wants to have textbooks that include examples from India and the Global South. She is writing a book on plant–animal–microbe interactions for the series. She mentions her father's biography again, which is with the editors. In her role as the current Chief Editor of Journal of Biosciences, she is trying to give it an interdisciplinary approach. When asked to share her father’s name, she mentions that normally, she hates it when people ask only the father's name or husband's name. Her father was Dr Ernest Joseph Borges and her mother was Gracie Soares Borges.