Fact Sheet: Mammals of India (MaOI)

Mammals of India (MaOI) is a new model of repository on Indian mammals by the Scientists and Researchers from the National Centers for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bangalore. It is a citizen-scientific repository initiated in September 2018. It is a first such repository of Mammals in India.
Special Features Of MaOI

• It is an online, freely –accessible portal whose aim is to develop individual pages for all Indian mammals covering all related information about their distribution, breeding, variation, identification and conservation .
• The website mammalsofindia.org provides a facility to the citizen to upload photographic observations about mammals. 768 images, of 161 species of mammals, have been uploaded by October 25, 2018.
• The photographs of rare species such as Red Serow from Manipur, Lynx a species of wild cat from Jammu and Kashmir, Asian Golden Cat from West Kameng district of Arunachal Pradesh and Binturong, also known as bear cat, from East Kameng district of Arunachal Pradesh have been uploaded on this portal.
• This is an exclusive portal for mammals in India which will help in having a good distribution map of mammals all around the country.
• MaOI is an initiative under Biodiversity Atlas project. The Biodiversity Atlas is a species-based bioinformatics platform.

India is a mega-diversity country with only 2.4% of the world’s land area but accounts for 7-8% of all global species. There are about 426 species of mammals known from India, which is about 8.86% of the world species.
Citizen Science Projects in Conservation Of Indian Biodiversity
Citizen science projects are changing the scenario of collection of scientific information about biodiversity.  These projects enable participants to make direct contribution to collection and research on information related to environmental issues. Citizens are the unpaid contributors in collecting information related to bio-diversity.

Month: Current Affairs - October, 2018