Anisotropic plasma hydrodynamics makes use of two heat fluxes representing the transfer of field-aligned and transverse (with respect to the external magnetic field) energies to describe thermal energy transfer. This is a considerably more complex treatment than isotropic plasma hydrodynamics in which only one heat flux component is considered. The present work analyzes the heat flux structure within the framework of anisotropic hydrodynamics and examines the effect of the anisotropic heat fluxes on the thermal plasma distribution both in the ionosphere and in the magnetically connected plasmasphere. The dependence of heat conductivities on the anisotropy parameter a=T⊥/T∥ is studied (T⊥ and T∥ are transverse and field-aligned temperatures, respectively). The heat conductivities increase with field-aligned temperature (with decreasing value of a), thereby enhancing the thermal energy transfer. The analytical solution obtained for the heat conduction equation is used to examine the effect of the electron energy distribution anisotropy on the electron temperature in the plasmasphere. The dependence of heat conductivity on the parameter a has been shown to result in a variation of electron temperature compared with the isotropic case (a=1). The calculated plasmaspheric temperature values rise when a>1 and fall when a<1. The strongest effect of the temperature anisotropy on the derived value of the electron temperature occurs at high altitudes along a flux tube in the vicinity of the equatorial plane. Predictions of this simplified analytical model are compared to observations of temperature anisotropies in the ionosphere. Basic agreement in the magnitude and sense of the electron temperature anisotropy between the model and observations is found. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1996