Sympetrum croceolum (Selys, 1883)

An East Asian species which was discovered by me in Lake Manzherok in N Altai in 1982 (Kosterin, 1987) (when the species was thought to be present in the Russian territory only in the southernmost Primorye) and then by Prof. A. Haritonov in SE Novosibirsk Province (Belyshev et al., 1989). So far, there are only these two known habitats in W Siberia. The species was also found by Dr. E. Mallikova (1993) in Amur Province as quite abundant at Blagoveshchensk. Belyshev has described from Putyatin Island in the Japanese sea (Primorye) a continental subspecies fuscoatrum Belyshev, 1964. It in general differs from the Japanese nominotypical subspecies by a more extended orange colouration on wings. Yet the West Siberian populations demonstrate the highest degree of development of this trait; their hind wings are entirely orange while on the fore wings only some colourless window is left, so that the dragonfly looks like a flying piece of flame. Moreover, mature West Siberian specimens have a dark brown darkening of wing tips. I am going to describe a West Siberian subspecies of Sympetrum croceolum. This so rare Siberian dragonfly seems to be a relic, most probably of the Climatic Optimum of the Holocene. In this Lake Manzherok also exist a population of a local endemic microspecies of water chestnut Trapa pectinata V. Vassil., which is most close to T. manshurica Fler. ranging in NE China, Japan and the Russian Far East (Tsvelev, 1995). Thus, the isolate population of an East Asian dragonfly has a parallel in the isolate of an East Asian plant. It is the latest appearing (in middle August) of our dragonflies and have some features of behaviour unusual for our Sympetrum such as a habit of sitting on floating leaves of Nymphaea

A teneral male

A quacking bog on the NE bank of Lake Manzherok situated among the northernmost mountains of Altai, very close to the piedmont plain, Maima District, Altai Republic, West Siberia, Russia. 20th August 1994.

O. Kosterin

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