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…
Global warming has altered the ranges of many species, especially those of insects and other ectotherms that are particularly susceptible to rising temperatures. Four decades ago, the dragonfly Crocothemis erythraea began to demonstrate northern range expansion in Germany, as well as in Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland and the UK. The rapid range expansion of C….
Indocypha cyanicauda Zhang & Hämäläinen, spec. nov. (holotype ♂ from Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, China; deposited at the Kunming Natural History Museum of Zoology) is described and illustrated from both sexes and compared with its congener I. vittata. Brief notes on the ecology and behaviour of the new species are provided.
Very little is known about the biology of larval odonates from the Neotropical region, and in particular there are no data on behavioral changes during ontogeny and growth ratios, though both are crucial to understanding the dynamics of Odonata communities. Here we study growth ratio, development patterns and behavior of Rhionaeschna marchali larvae. We characterized…
Information on the origin of distribution patterns shown by freshwater invertebrates in the Indo-Australian Archipelago is poor. Here we present a molecular based hypothesis of the phylogenetic relationships of Argiolestidae, a family of damselflies found throughout the tropical parts of the Eastern Hemisphere. We use this to address the following questions: (1) did Argiolestidae colonize…
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…
The dragonfly genus Ischnura has been the subject of numerous studies and is well studied in Europe and the Middle East. Nevertheless, information on the ecology, habitat preferences and phylogenetic relationships of some species is deficient. One species lacking such data is Ischnura intermedia, a near endemic species of the Middle East, found for the…
One of the forest types occurring in Southern Brazil is the mixed ombrophilous forest (MOF), a subtype of the Atlantic Forest, which is one of the richest biomes on Earth. This biome currently remains as a highly fragmented mosaic, under pressure from human development. The diversity and ecology of most animal groups in this biome…
The larva of Papuagrion is described and illustrated for the first time based on two specimens collected near Goroka, Papua New Guinea. The larvae were identified by matching the mitochondrial marker COI with that of an adult specimen collected at the same locality. The larvae were found in the leaf axils of Pandanus trees which…
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…