In a field study carried out in 2011 and 2014 adult dragonflies were identified as a rapid and easy-to-use means of assessing habitat quality and biological integrity of Mediterranean streams and rivers in the province of Barcelona (Region Catalonia, Iberian Peninsula). The study included sampling sites from five different river catchments: Besòs, Foix, Llobregat, Ter…
Globally, freshwater ecosystems and the organisms that depend on them are at risk. Dragonflies and damselflies (collectively, “odonates”) have a history of being used as bioindicators of freshwater habitat quality due to their wide range in environmental sensitivities across species and because they are relatively accessible.
Natural landscapes of Latin America, such as the Cerrado biome, are increasingly changing due to conflicting development models between economic growth and biodiversity conservation. In cases of total or partial suppression of natural vegetation, more sunlight reaches the streams, leading to changes in Odonata assemblages.
Environmental management is one of the most important activities in ecological conservation at present. Faced with various socioeconomic impacts (e.g., urbanization, agriculture, and logging), practical and effective ways to analyze and determine how biodiversity is affected by these anthropogenic activities are essential.
The increasing use of dragonflies and damselflies as models in studies on biodiversity in the last decades has unraveled several features of natural processes and mechanisms for species conservation. Nevertheless, biodiversity is a polysemic concept that resolves multiple dimensions that, together, enroll what we observe as species and lineages diversity. One of these dimensions is Ethodiversity, which may represent the individual diversity of behavioral traits and higher organization levels.
Dragonflies (Insecta: Odonata) use both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, and the abundance and diversity of odonates should be good indicators of habitat integrity. To determine which environmental variables affect odonates, we sampled adult dragonflies three times at 12 sites in Pickens and Greenville Counties, SC, USA, in different habitats, at different spatial scales, across a…
Odonates have been recognized as an important group for evaluating ecosystems since they are used as bioindicators of the conservation status of the habitat they occupy, in addition to being generalist predators feeding on invertebrates and small vertebrates. In this work, the biodiversity of adult odonates from a locality near the San Marcos River, in…
The department of Ñeembucú, in south-western Paraguay, is home to the virtually unexplored Ñeembucú Wetlands, the second largest wetland system in the country, representing a major gap in biodiversity knowledge. As organisms ubiquitous with wetlands, the Odonata, or dragonflies (Anisoptera) and damselflies (Zygoptera), have the potential to be effective indicators of wetland habitats in the…
Dragonflies (Odonata: Anisoptera) are often used as indicators of habitat type and quality due to their varied use of aquatic and terrestrial habitats. Species differ in their preferences for lotic and lentic waters, but community changes across ecotones, or transitional zones between distinct habitats (e.g. lotic and lentic), are not well understood. We quantified dragonfly…
The insects of the order Odonata have an aquatic larval stage and land-dwelling adults. These insects play an important role in aquatic ecosystems and are excellent bioindicators. The present study was based on a scientometric analysis of the research available on the Odonata, which aimed to identify the principal trends and gaps in the database…