Arthropoda: Crustacea:Peracardia:Isopoda

Introduction: Isopods are cosmopolitan group they are predominantly marine but estuarine and freshwater forms are also well-represented.A large number of this group is also terrestrial.They may be free-living, parasitic, predators, filter predators, scavengers, wood-boring, m y r m e c o p h i l o u s o r c a v e r n i c o l o u s .Corresponding to their diverse mode of life, their shape and size also varies markedly.The size of the isopods ranges from 300 micrometers (Microcerberidae) to about 50 cm as in the genus Bathynomus (Cirolanidae).The Order Isopoda is divided in to 12 sub orders namely Asellota, Calabozoidea, Cymothoida, Epicaridea, Limnoriidea, Microcerberidea, Oniscidea, Phoratopidea, Phreatoicidea, Sphaeromatidea, Tainisopidea and Valvifera.Out of the 12 suborders except Calabozoida, Phoratopidea and Tainisopidea the remaining 9 suborders are available in India.Among this the suborder Oniscidea is terrestrial.Studies on Indian Ispods were initiated by Brunnich in 1783 and it was well explored by various eminent taxonomists and young researchers (for details refer Venkataraman et al, 2016), presently the rearchers pay more attention on parasitic Isopods Dr. Aneesh and his team have described several new parasitic Isopods from the country and the recent additions on Indian Isopods are Elthusa aquabio Aneesh, Helna, Raj & Kumar, 2023 from Odisha, Sandythoa tiranga Aneesh, Bruce, Helna & Kumar, 2024, Brucethoa isro Aneesh, Helna & Biju Kumar, 2024 fom Kerala and Ichthyoxenos aneeshi Mitra & Chowdhury, 2024 from West Bengal.Global diversity: More than 10304 species of Isopods are known globally (Hartebrodt, 2022) Diversity in India: Devroy (2012) listed around 3 0 0 s p e c i e s o f I s o p o d s f r o m I n d i a , Venkataraman et al (2016) in their State of Art on Crustacean Taxonomy in India have mentioned that a total of 325 species of Isopods are available in India.Ravichandran et al (2019) has reviewed the Isopods of the family Cymothoidae and removed 5 species from Indian list and few species were synonimysed with other already known species.Valarmathi ( 2024) reported 334 species of Isopods from India, where as at present 316 species belonging to 137 genera and 38 families are consireded as valid.Among the earlier known species of India, four species namley Synidotea fluviatilis Pillai, 1954, Astacilla gibbossa Pillai, 1954, Tylus albidus Budde-Lund, 1879 and Xenanthura linearis Pillai, 1954 are not accepted; status of 10 species namely Porcellio assamensis