Daphnia (Ctenodaphnia) simils Claus, 1876

CHATTERJEE, TAPAS, KOTOV, ALEXEY A., DAMME, KAY VAN, CHANDRASEKHAR, S. V. A. & PADHYE, SAMEER, 2013, An annotated checklist of the Cladocera (Crustacea: Branchiopoda) from India, Zootaxa 3667 (1), pp. 1-89 : 19

(31) Daphnia (Ctenodaphnia) simils Claus, 1876 s.lat.

Indian records. Bihar — Kumar et al. (2011); Jammu & Kashmir— Nath (1994), Siraj et al. (2006), Sharma K.K. & Kotwal (2011); Maharashtra —Patil et al. (2008); Punjab — Battish (1983), Battish & Kumari (1986); Rajasthan — Venkataraman (1990b); Tamil Nadu —Venkataraman (1992a, 1995a), Raghunathan & Suresh Kumar (2002, 2009), Annalakashmi & Amsath (2011); West Bengal —Venkataraman (1995a, 1998c); General record— Fernando & Kanduru (1984), Murugan et al. (1998), Raghunathan & Suresh Kumar (2003).

Remarks. Described from Israel ( Claus 1876). The presence of this species in India needs a special confirmation, because many records before 1991 (and after 1991 in case of limited access to specialised literature) may belong to Daphnia similoides Hudec, 1991 . There is a chance of its full absence in India, being replaced by D. similoides . But, at the same time, we can expect more than one similis -like taxon in India, as in Europe or North America ( Petrusek 2007; Adamowicz et al. 2009). The biology of this taxon was studied by Venkataraman et al. (1986).

Distribution. Revision of the D. similis -group by Hudec (1991) was conducted based on a litmited set of samples from few regions of Asia. As a result, real distributions of the members of the similis -group are unknown. Presence of D. similis s.str. in Europe was confirmed genetically ( Petrusek 2007), althouth it was found that some other similis -like taxa are also present there ( Adamowicz et al. 2009).