At the survey sites is at Chestnut Marsh, and on our second survey there we found a female individual which did not look like the more common A. femina. Upon checking with experts in the field we were not able to do a proper identification due to extreme similarity in colouration between several species, and also the individuals of this genus tend to have a huge range of different colour forms. Female Odonata individuals is generally hard to differentiate to a species level if there is no good documentation or clear differences in the appendages.
On a survey yesterday morning we found two males and a female after much time spent searching and tracking, because these damsels are really small! (even for damselflies) Also, they tend to perch on the base parts of the reed, near the water surface, thus its easy to miss them if you just do a quick glance.
We're now able to identify it as the Agriocnemis minima because the male appendages for this genus are rather different for each species. It can be differentiated from the other Agriocnemis species by the structure at the end of its appendage - the A. minima has a hook-like structure, which can be seen in this photo.
For more info: http://thaiodonata.blogspot.com/2011/02/agriocnemis-minima-one-of-seven-species.html and you can see that the other forms are really different! The female colouration tends to be duller, but this little guy has really brilliant markings :)
1 comment:
Congrats for discovering a new damselfly species! I heard from Tang yesterday that we now have a total of 129 species in Singapore! Well done to all!
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