Assistant Professor in Wildlife Ecology

CV (link)
Personal homepage (link)

Working areas

Improving our understanding of the drivers of migration from individuals to populations

Individuals in a population can be divided into three main stages of their life history: pre reproductive, reproductive and post reproductive. These individuals differ in their vital rates due to the metabolic requirements at these stages. The long distance migratory behaviour is an adaptation to overcome the environmental harshness, predation and resource scarcity by migrating to favourable areas. Nevertheless, even within the migratory populations, differences in migratory behaviour are observed among different sexes, age classes and individuals. It is however unclear, how these differences among individuals in terms of their life history and costs and benefits of migration to them, translate into the decisions of undertaking these long perilous journeys.

Animal movement under the influence of management, land use and climate change

The Scandinavian landscape has changed remarkably in the past few decades in terms of land use, predator control, wildlife management and livestock grazing, just like any other migratory ecosystem in the world. This trend is expected to continue in future. Climate change is expected to induce major changes in migratory systems and hence raise further challenges to the management of migratory species. Especially in the case of migratory ungulates for which the timing of spring green up is tightly coupled with the onset of the spring migration and calving, climatic changes in temperature, precipitation and productivity are likely to induce major range shifts during spring and autumn. This implies that an understanding of the role of wildlife and forest management practices and their spatio-temporal dynamics, existing and predicted land use and climate change conditions, is vital for the conservation of migration systems as well as sustainable management of herbivore and predator populations.


Research group
Moose Research.


Competence area
Large mammals, Spatial Ecology, Long distance migration, Climate change.


Research interests
Movement ecology and behaviour, Wildlife Management and Protected Area Planning, Biodiversity offsets.


Current teaching
Wildlife Census techniques.

Scientific publications

Robinson, S., Michel, S., Wiedemann, C., Zhumabayev,Y., Singh, N.J. (2012) Pastoral Tenure in Central Asia: theme and variation in the five former Soviet republics, In Rangeland Stewardship in Central Asia: balancing Improved Livelihoods, Biodiversity Conservation and Land Protection. (Ed) Victor Squires. Springer. pg.452.
Bull, J.W., Suttle, K.B., Gordon, A., Singh, N.J., Milner-Gulland, E.J. (In press) Biodiversity offsets in theory and practice. Oryx (Review paper).
Singh, N.J., Bagchi, S. (In press) Applied ecology in India: scope of science and policy to meet the contemporary environmental challenges. Journal of Applied Ecology.
Bull, J.W., Suttle, K.B., Singh, N.J., Milner-Gulland, E.J. (In press) Conservation when nothing stands still: moving targets and biodiversity offsets. Frontiers in Ecology and Environment.
Singh, N.J., Börger, L., Dettki, H., Bunnefeld, N., Ericsson, G. (2012) From migration to nomadism: movement variability in a northern ungulate across its latitudinal range. Ecological Applications. 22, 2007–2020.
Singh, N.J., Amgalanbaatar, S., Reading, R.P. (2011) Grouping Patterns of Argali in Ikh Nart Nature Reserve, Mongolia. Mongolian Journal of Biological Sciences, 8, 7-13.
Singh, N.J., Milner-Gulland, E.J. (2011) Conserving a moving target: planning protection for a migratory species as its distribution changes. Journal of Applied Ecology, 48, 35-46. Science/AAAS - Editors Choice: 11 February 2011: 650-651.
Singh, N.J., Milner-Gulland, E. J. (2011) Monitoring ungulates in Central Asia: current constraints and future potentials. Oryx, 45, 38-49. Front cover article: February 2011 Issue.
Singh, N.J., Grachev, I.A., Bekenov, A.B. & Milner-Gulland, E.J. (2010) Tracking greenery in central Asia - the migration of the saiga antelope. Diversity and Distributions, 16, 663–675. Front cover article: July 2010 Issue.
Singh, N.J., Grachev, I.A., Bekenov, A.B. & Milner-Gulland, E.J. (2010) Saiga antelope calving site selection is increasingly driven by human disturbance. Biological Conservation, 143, 1770-1779.
Singh, N.J., Yoccoz, N.G., Cote, S.D., Lecomte, N., Fox, J.L. (2010) Scale and selection of habitat and resources: Tibetan argali in High altitude rangelands. Canadian Journal of Zoology, 88, 436-447.
Singh, N.J., Bonenfant, C., Yoccoz, N.G., Cote, S.D. (2010) Sexual segregation in Eurasian wild sheep. Behavioral Ecology, 21, 410–418.
Struve, J., Lorenzen, K., Blanchard, J., Borger, L., Bunnefeld, N., Edwards, C., Hortal, J., MacCall, A., Matthiopoulos, J., Van Moorter, B., Ozgul, Ap., Royer, F., Singh, N.J., Yesson, C., Bernard, R. (2010) Lost in space? Searching for directions in the spatial modelling of individuals, populations and species ranges. Biology Letters, 6, 575-578.
Aiyadurai, A., Singh, N. J., Milner-Gulland, E.J. (2010) Wildlife hunting by indigenous tribes: a case study from Arunachal Pradesh, Northeast India. Oryx, 44, 564-572.
Singh, N.J., Yoccoz, N.G., Bhatnagar, Y.V., Fox, J.L. (2009) Using habitat suitability models to sample rare species in high-altitude ecosystems: A case study with Tibetan argali. Biodiversity and Conservation, 18, 2893-2908.


Popular publications

Brown, M., Singh, N.J. (2011) Feasibility study for trophy hunting of Saiga Antelopes using a community management approach. Saiga News 12: 12-13.
Singh, N.J., Amgalabaatar, S., Reading, R.P. (2011) Temporal dynamics of group size and sexual segregation in Ibex. Exploration into the Biological Resources of Mongolia (Halle/Saale, Germany)/ Erforsch. biol. Ress. Mongolei (Halle/Saale) 11: 315-322.
Ito, T.Y., Shinoda1, M., Esipov, A., Grachev, Y., Singh, N. J. and Milner-Gulland, E.J. (2010). Satellite tracking of saigas in Ustyurt. Saiga News 10: 10-11.
Leon, J., Singh, N. J., Arylov, Y.N., Obgenova, O.B., Milner-Gulland, E.J. (2010) Can we use local knowledge to map saiga distributions? Saiga News 10: 13-14.

.