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SEASONAL VARIATION AND DISTRIBUTION OF EUGLENOPHYCOTA IN THE PUNJAB

SYED TARIQ-ALI¹, A. ZARINA¹ AND MUSTAFA SHAMEEL²

Abstract: A long survey of different freshwater habitats was made during December 2003-July 2006 in the districts of Gujranwala, Jhang, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Sargodha, Sheikhupura and Sialkot in the Punjab Province of Pakistan. As a result of that distribution and diversity of 55 species belonging to three genera viz., Euglena, Phacus and Trachelomonas of the phylum Euglenphycota were observed. Most of the collected species were found to grow in summer (39.13%), they slightly decreased in autumn (27.53%) and their occurrence diminished in winter (15.94%). Largest number of species was collected from Lahore City and its neighboring areas (42.85%), which was followed by the district of Rawalpindi (35.71%), the other five districts exhibited a poor distribution of species (2.85-5.71%). Euglena Ehrenberg with its 42 species occurred most commonly (76.36%), followed by Phacus Dujardin with 11 species (20%), and Trachelomonas Ehrenberg with 2 species was the least common (3.63%), It was further observed that a vast majority of the species occurred simultaneously in planktic and benthic conditions (56.36%), while 27.27% of them were growing in purely planktic and 16.36% in epiphytic conditions.

¹Department of Botany, Federal Urdu University of Arts, Science & Technology, Gulshan-e-Iqbal Campus, Karachi-75300

²Department of Botany, University of Karachi, Karachi-75270, Pakistan