The National Education Policy 2020 emphasises the need for a multidisciplinary approach in higher education to enable holistic learning. In this article, Tamralipta Patra and Tara Kiran Kurre, faculties of Teacher Education in the School of Arts and Sciences, Azim Premji University write about a course in which undergraduate students explore the topics of biodiversity and human-nature conflicts in India through the folk art forms of the country and other creative works.

Speak of comfort zones! In this article, Abhijeet Bayani, a field biologist and an educator at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, disentangles the meanings and purposes of three terms commonly used in ecological studies to discuss the space in which an organism thrives – habitats, microhabitats and niches.

Conservation research can be key to making effective conservation policies, but only when the policymakers are trained to understand and critically analyse its findings. In this article, Andrea D. Phillott highlights numerous resources that can help educators train students – future conservationists – in the use of evidence-based conservation. Phillott is a Professor in Environmental Studies and teaches Conservation Biology, Ecology, and Environmental Studies at FLAME University, Pune.

What’s the measure of species diversity of a habitat? Is it the number of inhabitants? Is it the number of species? Or is it the presence of a rare species? In this article, field biologist Abhijeet Bayani throws light on how he approaches this question of species ‘diversity’ in his classroom (a.k.a nature), while ensuring that his undergraduate students do not confuse it with a very related concept of species ‘richness’.