Cyclestheriidae Sars, 1899

Padhye, Sameer, Rabet, Nicolas & Ghate, Hemant, 2015, First faunal inventory of large branchiopods (Crustacea: Branchiopoda) of Western Maharashtra, India with taxonomical and distributional comments, Zootaxa 3904 (2), pp. 208-222 : 216

Family Cyclestheriidae Sars, 1899

One species, Cyclestheria hislopi ( Baird, 1859) was previously reported from two localities on the outskirts of Pune city ( Padhye et al. 2011a). This species was commonly observed in temporary as well as permanent aquatic habitats (rivers) throughout the study area. Only parthenogenetic females were seen and in large numbers with absence of males and sexual females. Once thought of as a pantropical species ( Roessler 1995), a number of cryptic species have been recently identified following a detailed phylogentic analysis of this species across the globe ( Schwentner et al. 2013) with population from India and Singapore forming a separate ‘Oriental’ clade. The Indian populations thus more likely to be C. hislopi s. str. since this species was originally described from Nagpur, Eastern Maharashtra ( Baird, 1859; Sars, 1887).