A statewide survey of four endogamous Brahman populations of Tamil Nadu reveals a low level of inbreeding in three of them. In the fourth population, the Thengalai, the level is higher, but not as high as in other social castes. The Tamil Brahmans rank next to the Telugu and the Kanarese Brahmans in this respect. Uncle-niece marriages also occur as in Telugu-speaking populations, and these exceed in the two Ayyangar populations in comparison to the Ayyar. A decline of first-cousin marriages and an increase of uncle-niece marriages are detected in the first two living generations in each population.
A qualitative survey of freshwater Oligochaeta was conducted in selected districts of Tamil Nadu, India, from October 2013 to June 2015. Thirteen taxa were recorded from a total of 1,915 specimens of freshwater Oligochaeta examined from various random samples. Out of the 13 taxa 10 were identified to the species level, two were identified to genus level and one only to subfamily level. These provided the first reports of
A survey of aquatic Oligochaeta was conducted at Thiruvallur, Chennai, Kanchipuram, Villupuram and Nilgiris districts of Tamil Nadu from October 2015 to June 2016. Eleven taxa were recorded from a total of 922 specimens examined, eight of them were identified to species level. Five naidids identified during the present study: Branchiodrilus semperi, Dero dorsalis, Dero digitata, Dero indica and Dero zeylanica, and six tubificid taxa Branchiura sowerbyi, Tubificidae sp. 1, Tubificidae sp. 2, Tubificidae sp. 3, Limnodrilus hoffmeisteri and L. udekemianus. Dero dorsalis constitute the first report for Kanchipuram district. A DNA barcode sequence (GenBank accession no. MF125273) of the commercially important Limnodrilus hoffmeisteri, commonly known as ‘Tubifex worms’ in Chennai, was obtained and compared with other published COI sequences from that morphospecies from around the world.
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