Deepthi recently finished her first season of field work in the agrarian landscapes of Peninsular India where she documented water bird diversity in 58 human-made wetlands. Using point count surveys, she recorded about 45,000 individuals of 78 species over three visits to each wetland.

She will use these data to estimate detection probabilities and abundances of the species and to understand patch and landscape correlates of water bird diversity.  She then plans to build patch-occupancy models to investigate questions pertaining to metapopulation dynamics and persistence.