A new species of the genus Leptestheriella from India

Distribution and assemblages of large branchiopods (Crustacea: Branchiopoda) of northern Western Ghats, India

“…Some parts of the Western Ghats of Maharashtra possess unique and interesting habitats in the form of rocky outcrops (Widdowson and Cox, 1996;Jog et al, 2002) which are generally known to host rich large branchiopod fauna (Pinder et al, 2000;Timms 2006;Brendonck et al, 2010;Jocque et al, 2010). Despite these facts, ecological and distributional studies on the large branchiopod in these parts of Ghats and surrounding areas are rare to the best of our knowledge, with only a few published reports (Pai, 1958;Karande and Inamdar, 1959, 1960, 1964Padhye et al, 2011aPadhye et al, , 2011bPadhye et al, , 2015.…”

First faunal inventory of large branchiopods (Crustacea: Branchiopoda) of Western Maharashtra, India with taxonomical and distributional comments

“…There have been recent revisions of many taxa using morphological and molecular techniques (Brendonck et al 1992;Murugan et al 2002;Weekers et al 2002;Rogers 2006;Rabet 2010;Rabet et al 2012;Rogers et al 2012;Korn et al 2013;Rogers et al 2013;Schwentner et al 2009Schwentner et al , 2013 resolving some problems and posing new questions as well. The knowledge about the Indian large branchiopod distribution is fragmentary to date (Tiwari 1951;Longhurst 1955;Karande & Inamdar 1959, 1960Royan & Alfred 1971;Raj 1971;Battish 1981Battish , 1983Balaraman & Nayar 2004;Babu & Nandan 2010;Rabet 2010;Simhachalam & Timms 2012). Many regions within the country still remain unexplored.…”

“…High morphological variability, as mentioned before, has compounded the problem with many new species being described and subsequently synonymized. The Western region of Maharashtra is one such area with few scattered records of large branchiopods (Kulkarni 1953;Pai 1958;Karande & Inamdar 1959, 1960Ghate & Shetty 1997;Ghate et al 2003;Velu & Munuswamy 2003;John et al 2004;Padhye et al 2011aPadhye et al , 2011bVikas et al 2011, Rogers & Padhye 2014 but with no comprehensive inventory. Western region of Maharashtra also incorporates a part of the Western Ghats which are known to have very high endemic flora and fauna (Myers et al 2000).…”