DIVERSITY STATUS OF ZOOPLANKTON IN A TYPICAL POND ECOSYSTEM OF CACHAR DISTRICT, ASSAM, INDIA

An experiment was designed through a thorough systematic process to determine the abundance of several zooplankton group of Barambaba temple pond as they are important biotic components influencing all the functional aspects of an aquatic ecosystem, such as food chains, food webs, energy flow and cycling of organic matter. The experiment was carried out under the suitable environment of this freshwater pond. Continuous collection of plankton species was made up for one years. During this study total 30 zooplankton genera were encountered belonging from 4 major zooplankton groups. Cladocera represented by 12 genera while copepoda represented by 4 genera, again 13 genera found belonging from rotifer and only 1 genera found from the ostracoda. Among all the 4 groups rotifera found to be most dominant group both in quantitatively and qualitatively while ostracoda found to be least dominant quantitatively as well as qualitatively.