Volume : 4, Issue : 9, September - 2015

Diverse Freshwater Spirotrich Ciliate Fauna from Okhla Bird Sanctuary, Delhi, India

Sripoorna Somasundaram, Jeeva Susan Abraham, Renu Gupta, Seema Makhija, Ravi Toteja

Abstract :

<p>&lt;p&gt;&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;India, with 2.4% of the world&amp;lsquo;s area, has over 8% of the world&amp;lsquo;s total biodiversity, making it one of the 12 mega-diversity countries in the world. This status is based on the species richness and levels of endemism recorded in a wide range of taxa of both plants and animals. In the present study, we explored ciliate diversity from fresh water samples collected from Okhla Bird Sanctuary (28&amp;amp;deg;32&amp;lsquo;43.5&amp;amp;quot;N, 77&amp;amp;deg;18&amp;lsquo;41.7&amp;amp;quot;E). It is a bird sanctuary at the Okhla barrage over Yamuna River. The most prominent feature of the sanctuary is the large lake created by damming the river. Cells isolated from the water samples collected from the lake were cultured in vitro under laboratory conditions. Identification and characterization of ciliates was done in vivo by Phase Contrast Microscopy, Feulgen staining and silver impregnations. In total, 27 species from 24 genera were found. A higher proportion of Spirotrichean (44.45%), species were identified. Other species belonging to Classes Karyorelictea, Litostomatea, Prostomatea, Phyllopharyngea and Colpodea were also found but relatively in lesser proportion.&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;&lt;/p&gt;</p>