Rotifer community in relation to limnological characteristics of Wular lake in Kashmir Himalaya

The present study was aimed to assess the impact of physico-chemical parameters of water on the rotifer community in Wular Lake, the largest freshwater lake in the Indian subcontinent. Water samples were collected between September, 2012 to August, 2014 from nine study sites. Rotifers were collected by filtering 100 liters of water through a nylon silk net having 75 meshes/ linear cm and preserved in 5% formalin.  Rotifers were abundant during summer and lower diversity was observed during the winter. Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) and Bartlett's test was also performed to check the significance of the all the variables with the rotifer species. KMO test reflects that the data can be preceded for PCA as the data reflects significant values. The physico-chemical parameters such as  water temperature (19.3±8C°to 23.3 ± 9.9 C°), depth (1.7±0.8m to 4±1.7 m), pH (7.1±0.2 to 7.8±0.4) and total phosphate phosphorus (201±86.4 to 257.3±119.4 µg/l) strongly influenced the rotifer community in the lake.