Faunal diversity of Cladocera (Crustacea: Branchiopoda) of Nokrek Biosphere Reserve, Meghalaya, northeastern India

Abstract

Thirty-four species of Cladocera, belonging to 24 genera and seven families, documented from the Nokrek Biosphere Reserve of Meghalaya indicate fairly speciose and diverse taxocoenosis and comprise 57.7% of species known from this state. Coronatella anodonta is the first confirmed report from India and two species are new records from Meghalaya. Disperalona caudata is an interesting Australasian element and a number of species show regional distributional importance. The Cladocera of the Nokrek Biosphere Reserve show tropical characteristics with Cosmopolitan > Cosmotropical species, and are characterized by a distinct richness of the littoralperiphytonic members of the Chydoridae as well as a paucity of limnetic elements. The species richness of Cladocera in various localities ranges between 11-24 (15±3) species.

Notes on some rare and interesting Cladocera (Crustacea: Branchiopoda: Anomopoda: Chydoridae) from Deepor Beel, Assam, India

“…This species was recorded for the first time from northeastern India from Meghalaya , and our report further extends its distribution to the adjoining state of Assam. Alona guttata tuberculata and Coronatella anodonta are new records from Assam; the latter is recently observed from the Nokrek Biosphere Reserve of Meghalaya (Sharma & Sharma 2011) while reported the former again from Meghalaya. These two taxa are, hence, known to date only from the northeastern region of India…”

Status of studies on zooplankton fauna of Arunachal Pradesh, India

“…This is purely an under-representation of the zooplankton diversity of the state which is otherwise well known for its rich and unique biodiversity. The poor zooplankton diversity of Arunachal Pradesh is in contrast to the established fact that within the Indian landmass, the highest diversity of Rotifera (Sharma & Sharma 2014b) and Cladocera (Sharma & Sharma 2011) have been documented from the northeastern region, which also includes this state. Low level of exploration (Gurney, 1907) Papumpare, E. Siang Sinha et al 2002 of zooplankton fauna of Arunachal Pradesh is perhaps due to the mostly inaccessible terrain of the state and lack of experts in and around the state.…”

“…Within India, the cladoceran fauna of the northeast is the best known (Sharma & Sharma 1990, 2011. Studies on Cladocera of Arunachal Pradesh, however, is virtually lacking except for some scattered reports.…”

A revision of the genus Leberis Smirnov, 1989 (Cladocera: Chydoridae) in the Old World and Australia

“…But a taxonomic status of Leberis records from numerous faunal publications without any illustrations (e.g. Sharma & Sharma 2011;Sharma & Sharma 2014;Padhye & Dumont 2015) or with non-informative illustrations (Michael & Sharma 1988;Kulkarni et al 2015) remains unclear (Chatterje et al 2013. (Daday, 1898), parthenogenetic female from big pond near Bung Jod, "Phoenix" factory, Khon Kaen Province, Thailand, coll.…”

“…At the same time, even after the revision of Leberis made by , in the cladoceran lists from India several names are represented (e.g. L. davidi in Sharma & Sharma (2011) and L. diaphanus in Sharma & Sharma (2014)). Some authors noticed that the findings of L. diaphanus from Tropical Asia (Van Damme et al 2013;Kotov et al 2013) and Africa are needed in a revision; in addition, they discussed the possibility that more than one Leberis species may be found at the same tropical region of the world.…”