| Zooplankton communities are typically diverse and occur in almost all type of aquatic habitat. They play a key role in the aquatic food web by providing crucial source of food to a number of aquatic animals especially for fishes and are highly sensitive to environmental changes. They act as primary consumers of aquatic ecosystem. Their growth and distribution are depending on various biotic and abiotic factors. The anthropogenic activities which leads to the reduction of water quality play a significant impact natural resource. The freshwater zooplankton mainly comprise of Protozoa, Rotifera, Cladocera, Copepoda and Ostracoda. Cladocera’s which forms an important part of zooplankton group, acts an important role in aquatic food webs and are also used as environmental tools for toxicological studies and in bioassay studies. In the present study efforts have been made to ascertain the abundance of Cladocera in the 12 water bodies near to Hyderabad city, Telengana state, India. The present study reports a total of 24 Cladocera species belonging to 2 orders, 14 different genera under 5families from these water bodies. The family Chydoridae represents the most dominant family and the abundance of Cladocerans, particularly the members of Chydoridae indicates the eutrophic conditions of a water body, resulting from organic pollution. The results of this study indicated that potentiality of zooplankton as bioindicator is very high and also is an attempt to list out the Cladocerans from these water bodies.
Keywords: Zooplankton, Ecosystem, Anthropogenic, Habitat, Cladocera, Bioassay, Eutrophic, Bioindicator.
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