Contribution to the Knowledge of Indian Marine Molluscs: Family Tellinidae (Part IV)

India has a vast coastal line, with diversified ecosystems offering suitable habitats for divergent faunal groups.  Mollusca are an important group and there are only a few important studies dealing exclusively with marine molluscs.  There were only a few attempts to revise individual families.  It is more particularly true with reference to bivalve molluscs of India.  Out of total 117 bivalve families about 101 families are having their representation from Indian waters.  Except for one work on Donacidae (Subba Rao and Dey, 1986) all other work on Indian bivalves is anecdotal in nature and scattered in several old and recent publications in general molluscan fauna.  The concept of species has also changed after the description of new species in the last century.  The objective of this paper is to update our knowledge on tellinids of India.  The present account deals with the species inhabiting the Indian sea and estuaries.  It includes their upto date nomenclature, synonymy, distinctive features, affinity, type locality and range of distribution.