Dr. Kritika Garg is an evolutionary biologist specializing in population genetics and behavioral ecology. She joined Ashoka University as a Ramalingaswami Fellow in 2021. Her lab uses an interdisciplinary approach to understand the evolution of species across time scales. The two major questions the lab is currently working on are

The role of sexual selection in shaping the social/mating system and speciation

Understand the genomic legacy of domestication in the Indian subcontinent

She obtained her Master’s degree in Genomics from the Madurai Kamaraj University, after which she persuaded her PhD in Behavioral Ecology at the National Centre for Biological Science under the guidance of Dr. Uma Ramakrishnan. During her PhD, she combined long-term field-based behavioral data with population genetic data and rigorous statistical modelling to define promiscuity and mating systems of natural populations. She provided one of the rare and earliest evidence of promiscuity in harem forming bats, while also revealing the importance of flexible mating strategies in wild populations. After this she moved to the National University of Singapore and worked on speciation and biogeography of various avian lineages. Her post-doctoral research focused on the effects of Pleistocene glaciations in shaping the avifauna diversity in South East Asia and Australasia using both fresh as historical museum samples. Prior to joining Ashoka University, Dr. Garg was a Faculty Fellow at the Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology, Bangalore.