Funding: Vinod Gadgil Smruti Pratishthan, Nashik, Maharashtra.Competing Interest: None.Acknowledgements: Aboli Kulkarni is grateful to "Vinod Gadgil Smruti Pratishthan, Nashik, Maharashtra" for providing funding assistance for this work and to Director, Zoological Survey of India and Officer-in-Charge Western Regional Centre for providing laboratory facilities to identify Odonata. She is also grateful to Dr. N.V. Joshi, CES, IISc, Bangalore for clearing basic concepts of statistical analysis, and to Dr. Ankur Patwardhan and Dr. Anand Padhye, Garware College, Pune for their encouragement and support. We also sincerely thank Col. Ashwin Baindur, College of Military Engineering, Pune for facilitating our studies in CME campus.Author Contribution: AK did the field work, identified the odonata and analyzed the data. KAS designed the study, identified odonata, analyzed the data and wrote the manuscript.Author details: Ms. Aboli Kulkarni is a post graduate student of biodiversity and this work is a part of her MSc Thesis. Currently, she is working on documentation of flora and fauna of Sacred Groves from Pune District at Agharkar Research Institute, Pune. She is deeply interested in studying Habitat Ecology and habitat preferences of organisms. Dr. K.A. Subramanian is scientist at Zoological Survey of India, Kolkata. Currently he is working on the diversity and distribution of Odonata, Ephemeroptera and Plecoptera of India.Abstract: Catchment landscape degradation and habitat modifications of freshwater ecosystems are a primary cause of biodiversity loss in riverine ecosystems all over the world. Many elements of the flora and fauna of freshwater ecosystems are sensitive to the changes in catchment land use and habitat modification. These sensitive taxa are also reliable indicators of freshwater ecosystem health. In the current study we investigate the seasonal and habitat distribution of Odonata (Insecta) across riparian land use types in Mula and Mutha river basins, northern Western Ghats, Maharashtra. There was a difference in the species composition across land use types and across seasons with highest diversity and abundance during the post monsoon period. The highest Odonata diversity was observed in urban areas followed by forest and agriculture fields. There was a loss of 31% of the odonate fauna in the study area over 50 years which could be due to rapid industrialization and urbanization of the region and consequent degradation of freshwater ecosystems. The significance of catchment land use on Odonata diversity and its value in landscape monitoring is discussed.

Most of the limnological studies in India have focussed on a few taxa of large, permanent water bodies, and pond ecosystems, and related temporary water bodies are neglected. We present here a faunal inventory, with representative photographs, for a single, small temporary pond, reporting over 125 species of strictly aquatic fauna and 25 species of associated fauna, even though we did not identify some groups such as Protozoa, Diptera and nymphs of Odonata, etc. The identified species belong to seven taxa of vertebrates and invertebrates together. Arthropoda and Rotifera were the most species rich groups, observed with 83 and 45 representatives, respectively. Coleoptera were the most numerous in terms of species number. Such a small water body holds some endemics as well as otherwise very rare animals and so deserves better attention. We also highlight the potential and importance of such habitats for research and conservation.