Impact of Natural and Anthropogenic Disturbances on the Benthic Ecological Quality of the Coastal Waters of Kochi, Southwest Coast of India

First description of two Paraprionospio species (Polychaeta: Spionidae) from tropical estuarine and coastal waters of India

“…Paraprionospio pinnata Ehlers (1901) [1,23,15,20] . However, Yokoyama and Sukumaran (2012) [25] suggested that these Paraprionospio species reported from India have been misidentified.…”

“…In both marine and estuarine benthic habitats, polychaetes are the most prevalent fauna, and they considerably contribute to overall macrofaunal biodiversity, frequently making up 60 to 80 percent of it (Hutchings, 1998) [11] . In addition to recycling nutrients and organic matter, polychaetes are crucial biological markers for determining the ecological condition of an area (Naidu et al, 2018a) [15] , and more recently, they have also gained recognition as prospective species for microplastics research (Naidu et al, 2018b) [16] . Spionidae family polychaetes are significant taxa in marine benthic assemblages because they can thrive in a variety of environments, including muddy and sandy substrates (Abdul Jaleel et al, 2021; Sivadas et al, 2021) [1,27] .…”

“…The coastal waters of eastern Arabian Sea is well experiencing seasonal upwelling and regulated the biological production and biogeochemical processes in the pelagic-sea floor system (Gupta et al, 2016) [9] . On the other hand, high biological production and sinking organic matter enhances the benthic abundance and diversity (Joydas and Damodaran, 2009; Naidu et al, 2018a) [12,15] . The recent checklist by Sivadas and Carvalho (2020) [21] has indicated the marine annelids from the coastal waters of Indian subcontinent that 25% of the records are questionable and there is need for rigorous sampling and reexamination to discover new species for biodiversity studies.…”

“…The first comprehensive study on the abundance and distribution of benthic polychaetes in this estuary reported 42 species (Rao and Sarma, 1983), as well as the subsequent ones (Raut et al, 2005;Rao et al, 2009;Appalanaidu, 2015) [19,18,3] , did not provide taxonomic descriptions. In case of coastal waters of Arabian sea, mostly studies focused on traditional taxonomic patterns (abundance, biomass, and diversity; [12,1,15,20] , and further accurate taxonomic studies greatly needed for the benefit of ecological and conservation aspects along the Indian coast (Sivadas and Carvalho, 2020) [21] . Therefore, the present study carried out is the first detailed study on Paraprionospio species descriptive research work from the Godavari estuary, southeast coast of India, and the coastal waters of Arabian sea.…”