Order Notostraca Sars, 1867

Family Triopsidae Keilhack, 1909 . Triops granarius (Lucas, 1864) is the only species known from the area. First reported by Pai (1958), this species has been subsequently reported from NWG as a different species ( Triops orientalis Tiwari, 1951) only to be synonymized later (Raj, 1971). Ghate and Shetty (1997) observed this species in a temporary pool on the outskirts of Pune city. We observed T. granarius commonly in the NWG during the monsoon season. Variations in characters such as the dorsal organ shape, telsonic spines and apodous segments were seen in the studied specimens, which is common for this species (Longhurst 1955). Based on sequence data of CO1, 16S and 12S, it has been recently shown that there might be two different T. granarius lineages in Western Ghats of Maharashtra itself (Korn et al. 2013).