Diversity of Bivalves - Palk Bay: Classification and Description of Bivalve Species from Palk Bay Area- in Tamil Nadu,south East Coast of India

The Molluscs constitute a significant part of world fauna today. The Palk bay area is familiar for the presence of economically important renewable resources like seaweeds, shrimps, lobsters, holothurians, mollusks and fin fishes. However there is lack of information on the molluscan fauna. The fauna is rich in the intertidal area and coastal habitats from Point Calimere to Mandapam . Of late coastal habitats here are under threat from development activities and over exploitation of natural resources. This necessitates documentation of fauna present in this important area besides categorizing them as endemic, threatened and endangered species. This exercise in addition to information on abundance and diversity will help in the earmarking areas for conservation. Therefore the present initiative was taken to prepare a checklist of bivalves species available here along with their classification and key characters for identification. From this Palk Bay area, we have identified and recorded as many as 100 species of bivalves belonging to 4 orders, 19 families and 49 genera. Among these 47 new species are found to be new distributional records for the Palk Bay area.