Urbanization has considerable impacts on stream ecosystems. Streams in urban settings are affected by multiple stressors such as flow modifications and loss of riparian vegetation. The richness and abundance of aquatic insects, such as odonates, directly reflect these alterations and can be used to assess urban impacts on streams.
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…
A new species, Noguchiphaea laotica, is described based on specimens from Lon San, Saysomboun Province, Laos. The holotype male and a paratype female are deposited in the National Museum of Nature and Science, Tokyo. This new species is allied to N. yoshikoae from northern Thailand, but differs from it in the morphology of the male…
During 2.5 months of intensive fieldwork in Colombia (departments of Cauca, Nariño, and Putumayo, South America) from January to March 2017, we visited 13 localities and collected 291 specimens of 68 species of Odonata, including 17 new records for the country. We report range expansions for several species assessed as data deficient or under some…
Recent studies have indicated that frequent anthropogenic disturbances in tropical developing countries are primary drivers of reduction in community diversity and local extinction of many arthropods, including dragonflies. We assessed the impact of anthropogenic disturbances on odonate assemblages across three different land use types, in a biodiverse nature reserve in Ghana. A total of 37…
In this study we use high resolution SEM to describe the diversity of wax crystals and their distribution on different morphological structures in male individuals of Calopteryx splendens. The entire cuticle surface of this damselfly, with the exception of ommatidia and ocelli, is covered with crystalline wax in dimensions from submicron to micron range. It…
Due to the destruction of its primary habitats, the West Palaearctic libellulid Orthetrum coerulescens has suffered much decline in central Europe. However, at the regional scale it has survived in a variety of secondary habitat, such as draining ditches. In order to find adequate measures for its conservation and promotion, habitat use and habitat recognition…
We compared the prevalence and intensity of Arrenurus sensu stricto water mite parasites on Enallagma civile Hagen in Selys, 1853 (Zygoptera: Coenagrionidae) from 10 freshwater wetlands (playas) in two different land-cover contexts in western Texas from 2006-2007.
The global population structure and dispersal patterns of Pantala flavescens (Fabricius, 1798) are evaluated using a geographically extensive mitochondrial DNA dataset, a more limited samples of nuclear markers, wing isotopic (δ²H) data and a literature review. No spatial or temporal haplotype structure was recovered between the samples.
Land use influences the biodiversity of stream systems by changing the chemical composition of the water and the physical structure of the habitat. The present study evaluated the influence of these processes on the diversity metrics of Odonata at regional and local scales, testing the hypothesis that the two odonate suborders Anisoptera and Zygoptera will respond differently to habitat and landscape variables.