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Current Status of Indian Opisthobranch Fauna

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Ecology and Conservation of Tropical Marine Faunal Communities

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Abstract

Opisthobranchs are fascinating molluscs with species diversifying not only in colours but also in their specificity of feeding habit and habitat. Historical studies are centred mostly on known species rich localities and are not evenly distributed along all coastal states. Opisthobranchs are among the least studied group of molluscs in India and the work carried out on the opisthobranch fauna is scanty and sparse. Though India has over 8000 km long coastline along nine coastal states and two oceanic archipelagos and have diverse habitats such as coral reefs, sandy shores, rocky patches, mangroves as well as large mud flats; yet records of Indian opisthobranchs are very less. This study revealed that 311 species are known from India distributed over 7 orders, 53 families and 141 genera.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Dr. Bill Rudman, Dr. Richard Willan, Dr. Terry Gosliner, Dr. Nathalie Yonow, Dr. Kathe Jensen, Dr. Cynthia Towbridge, Dr. Benoit Dayrat, Dr. Gary McDonald, Mr. Vinicius Padula and Dr. Patrick Krug for their support in the form of personal communications, discussions, species validation and also for providing literature. We take opportunity to acknowledge Mr. C.R. Sreeraj for providing few ZSI publications. Ms. Amruta Prasade and Ms. Pooja Nagale helped preparing checklist and going through the manuscript. Mr. Vishwas Shinde and Rajendra Pawar provided valuable field assistance in searching for cryptic opisthobranchs during the survey. We take this opportunity to thank Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India for providing funding under AICOPTAX to carry out opisthobranch work along the coasts of Gujarat, Maharashtra and Lakshadweep. We thank Dr. J.R. Bhatt in particular for his continued support.

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  1. Conservation Department, Bombay Natural History Society, Hornbill House, S. B. Singh Road, Bombay, 400001, India

    Bhave Vishal & Apte Deepak

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  1. Bhave Vishal
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  2. Apte Deepak
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Correspondence to Bhave Vishal .

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  1. Zoological Survey of India, Kolkata, India

    K. Venkataraman

  2. Zoological Survey of India, Port Blair, India

    C. Sivaperuman

  3. Zoological Survey of India, Port Blair, Andaman und Nico.In., India

    C. Raghunathan

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Vishal, B., Deepak, A. (2013). Current Status of Indian Opisthobranch Fauna. In: Venkataraman, K., Sivaperuman, C., Raghunathan, C. (eds) Ecology and Conservation of Tropical Marine Faunal Communities. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-38200-0_5

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