My thesis entitled "Studies on the marine cyclopoid copepods: has been categorized into four main chapters namely: Introduction; Material and methods; Results; Discussion and Conclusion & Summary. These chapters were framed accordingly in the order of Taxonomy; Ecological Indices; Reproductive biology; Laboratory culture and proximate biochemical analyses. Only two species namely Apocyclops dengizicus (neritic / estuarine species) and Oithona rigida (oceanic species) were studied elaborately, due to their abundance and density.

Zooplankton samples were collected from two stations namely Muttukadu (unpolluted fishing area) and Ennore (a thermally polluted fishing area), which are located in Chennai (Lat. 13°06’N, Long 80°18’E), east coast of Tamilnadu, India.

Taxonomy: 16 species from two stations has been reported. Out of these 16 species, 15 species were reported from Muttukadu and 9 species from Ennore station. From these, 8 species were common to both the stations, 7 species were endemic to Muttukadu and only 1 species was endemic to Ennore station. All these 16 species were taxonomically revisited and two species namely, A. dengizicus and O. rigida were intensively studied using Scanning Electron Microscopy and redescribed.

Ecological Indices: Indices like Index of dominance, Species diversity, Species richness, Species evenness, Similarity-dissimilarity matrix and Cluster dendrogram were carried out using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (Version. 9.0) and Statistica (Version 5.0).

Reproductive biology: Reproductive biology of A. dengizicus and O. rigida were studied histologically and documented using digitized photomicrographs.

Laboratory culture: Monoculture of A. dengizicus was carried out using adult ovigerous females. The adult ovigerous females were separated and kept in 50ml beakers containing filtered seawater. After hatching of the eggs, the adult was removed to avoid cannibalism. The hatched eggs were allowed to develop until the next batch of adults formed, giving rise to lab reared eggs from wild adult animals. The laboratory cultures were maintained under room temperature (26-30^oC) and were fed with cultured diatoms, algae and baker’s yeast. All the 12 developmental stages (6 nauplii stages and 6 copepodid stages) were documented using digitized photomicrographs.

Proximate Biochemical assay: Two species namely A. dengizicus and O. rigida were selected for the proximate biochemical assay and were assayed using the standard procedures and compared, which showed that O. rigida is biochemically nutritive than A. dengizicus.

All these results were discussed in context with the latest national and international reviews and research publications.

For further details or any Employment Please contact Dr. Gopikrishna, Mantha at his Email: gopipoda@yahoo.com (or) mantha_gk@yahoo.com