Journal of Ecosystem & Ecography
Open Access

Research Article

Distribution and Abundance of Zooplankton Along Tamil Nadu Coastal Waters, India

Faculty of Marine Sciences, Centre of Advanced Study in Marine Biology, Annamalai University, Tamil Nadu, India

*Corresponding Author:

Varadharajan D
Faculty of Marine Sciences
Centre of Advanced Study in Marine Biology
Annamalai University, Tamil Nadu, India
E-mail: heartvaradhan@gmail.com

Received date: July 15, 2013; Accepted date: September 05, 2013; Published date: September 07, 2013

Citation: Varadharajan D, Soundarapandian P (2013) Distribution and Abundance of Zooplankton Along Tamil Nadu Coastal Waters, India. J Ecosys Ecograph 3:135. doi:10.4172/2157-7625.1000135

Copyright: © 2013 Varadharajan D, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and and source are credited.

Zooplanktons have a limited ability to control their fine-scale distribution in the water column, but they are also at the mercy of oceanic currents and water movements. The distribution and abundance of zooplanktons are strongly influenced by many factors. The present study consists of 26 species at three different stations. In this study, maximum of these species are found in station-3, i.e., Pichavaram, than the other 2 stations. The species recorded in the present study belongs to families: Foraminifera (9), Calanoida (6), Cyclopoida (4), Appendicularia (4) Hydroida(1), Rotatoria(1) and Sagittoida(1). The zooplankton production gradually decreases with increasing depth, where the offshore stations yield less abundance than the coastal waters stations.

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