Open Access

The odonate fauna of Papua New Guinea (PNG) is species rich but poorly studied. Geographic ranges, ecology, and thus conservation status of many species are unknown. In this study I provide an inventory of two sites within the largest formally protected forest area in PNG, the Crater Mountain Wildlife Management Area. I sampled odonates for a total of 112 days in a pristine forest site and for 36 days in a traditional garden village, and worked with local communities to increase the awareness of dragonflies in the area. I found a total of 78 species (60 Zygoptera, 18 Anisoptera) from 13 families, including at least six currently undescribed species. The pristine rainforest hosted more species (61) than the village (37), and a longer sampling period was required to reach an approximately equal level of the total species richness. I calculated species accumulation curves for both areas and found that 100 sampling days were required in the pristine forest, whereas 35 sampling days appeared sufficient in the modified forest. More than two-thirds of all species recorded in the pristine forest were observed in less than half of all the sampling sessions, indicating that species might be both rare and occur only during certain times of the year. The number of species recorded per sampling session indicated some seasonality in the odonate fauna of the pristine forest, which should be considered in future studies. The study suggests that modification of tropical rainforests will lead to a loss of species richness. Conservation of odonates in PNG is therefore dependent on the preservation of primary rainforests, which requires the education of native people living in these areas. Dragonflies were well known among local people inhabiting the study area, but did not play a major role in their culture. More work on dragonflies is needed to describe the diversity of the PNG odonate fauna.