Records of dragonflies and damselflies (Insecta: Odonata) of Dipang Lake, with two new records to Nepal

Abstract

Odonata fauna of Dipang Lake, Lekhnath, Kaski District was studied during April and May of 2019. Twenty-eight different species belonging to 20 genera and six families were recorded. Family Libellulidae was dominant representing 16 species. Among the recorded Odonata species, Aciagrion approximans (Selys, 1876) and Ceriagrion cerinorubellum (Brauer, 1865) are new records for Nepal.

Dragonflies and Damselflies (Insecta, Odonata) from the western region of Nepal with new records of four species

“…Besides this, there is no published literature for these species and now they are widely distributed in the western region of Nepal. Agriocnemis clauseni, Cephalaeschna viridifrons, Gynacantha incisura, Gynacanthaeschna sikkima, Scalmogomphus bistrigatus and Urothemis signata signata were reported from central Nepal only (Shrestha & Mahato, 1983;Vick, 1985Vick, , 1987Sasamoto & Ushijima, 2000;KC & Gurung, 2020;Sharma & Oli, 2022) and now its national distributional extends to western region of Nepal. Ceriagrion cerinorubellum and Rhodothemis rufa have recently been recorded from the central and eastern regions of Nepal (KC & Gurung, 2020;Conniff et al, 2020) which is also common in western Nepal.…”

“…Agriocnemis clauseni, Cephalaeschna viridifrons, Gynacantha incisura, Gynacanthaeschna sikkima, Scalmogomphus bistrigatus and Urothemis signata signata were reported from central Nepal only (Shrestha & Mahato, 1983;Vick, 1985Vick, , 1987Sasamoto & Ushijima, 2000;KC & Gurung, 2020;Sharma & Oli, 2022) and now its national distributional extends to western region of Nepal. Ceriagrion cerinorubellum and Rhodothemis rufa have recently been recorded from the central and eastern regions of Nepal (KC & Gurung, 2020;Conniff et al, 2020) which is also common in western Nepal. Similarly, Kalkman et al (2020) listed Tetrathemis platyptera as distributed in Nepal probably based on Conniff (2020), where she recorded the male specimens from the Lamjung district.…”

Species diversity and abundance of Odonata in Sishaghat of Tanahun district, Nepal

“…Vick (1989) published the first Odonata checklist of Nepal, including 172 species with altitudinal distributions. Thapa (2015) later listed 195 species of Odonata from 87 genera belonging to 18 families, but according to a more modern classification, the species number is now actually 185 for Nepal (Sajan and Gurung, 2020). Local wildlife studies are rare in the context of Nepal.…”

“…In contrast to this, the small area selected for our study might be the reason for the lower species number. In the study by Sajan and Gurung (2020) during April and May of 2019 in Dipang Lake, Kaski (catchment area of 2.39 km 2 and water body area of 0.14 km 2 ), they recorded 28 species. This area presents an altitude range of 670-700 m, which is close to the altitude range of our study area, but our area contains less, and discontinuous, water bodies, with a similar number of species within it.…”

“…There are about 588 taxa of Odonata (including 559 full species) known from South Asian countries (Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India, Bhutan and Pakistan) (Kalkman et al, 2020). About 185 species of Odonata are recorded from Nepal (Conniff, 2020;Sajan and Gurung, 2020).…”