Rhyothemis splendens
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| Rhyothemis splendens | ||||||||||||
| Fraser , 1955 |
Rhyothemis splendens is a hardly researched dragonfly species from the genus Rhyothemis in the family of the sail dragonflies(Libellulidae). It occurs in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and was thought to be missing between 1952 and 2014.
features
In the holotype , a female collected in 1952, the length of the abdomen is 16 mm and the length of the hind wings is 22 mm. The head, thorax and abdomen are almost metallic black. The forehead and the ocelli between the compound eyes are clearly metallic purple. The wings are transparent , broadly marked with a sharply defined black-brown pattern that has a bronze or copper-colored shimmer when light is reflected. In contrast to most other African Rhyothemis species, Rhyothemis splendens has black wing tips.
For the male, the following is stated: Can be distinguished from Rhyothemis fenestrina and Rhyothemis notata by the pattern on the wings: All wings have a dark band along the wing tip, which is set off from the broadly darkened wing base by a continuous clear (hyaline) stripe.
Distribution area, habitat and way of life
Currently the species is only known from the Lomami National Park in the middle of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. No other information is available about the distribution area, habitat and way of life. Klaas-Douwe B. Dijkstra and Viola Clausnitzer assume that the species lives in stagnant, possibly temporary waters in open, unforested habitats.
status
The IUCN lists the species in the category " data deficient ". In November 1952, the Belgian entomologist Charles Henri Victor Seydel (1873-1960) collected a single female on the upper Lualaba in the Kabongo region (in today's Lomami National Park ) in the Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), the British entomologist Frederic Charles Fraser (1880–1963) served as the type specimen for the first scientific description in 1955 . After that, this dragonfly species was long lost until the biologist Matt Muir from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) managed to photograph a specimen in December 2014. In 2016, the Dutch entomologist Klaas-Douwe B. Dijkstra from the Naturalis Biodiversity Center and the German entomologist Jens Kipping identified this specimen as a male of Rhyothemis splendens .
literature
- Fraser, Frederic Charles: Four new species of Odonata from the Belgian Congo. Revue de zoologie et de botanique africaines 52, 1955: p. 17-24
Web links
- Visiting Lomami National Park Before it was Officially a Park: Report on the rediscovery of Rhyothemis splendens
- Photo of Rhyothemis splendens by Matt Muir
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e Fraser, 1955, pp. 22-23
- ↑ a b Rhyothemis splendens Fraser, 1955. Splendid Flutterer in Dijkstra, K.-DB (editor). African Dragonflies and Damselflies Online. http://addo.adu.org.za/
- ↑ Rhyothemis splendens in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2016.2. Posted by: Viola Clausnitzer, 2008. Retrieved September 6, 2016.