Orthetrum serapia, Watson, 1984

Grand, Daniel, Marinov, Milen, Jourdan, Herve, Cook, Carl, Rouys, Sophie, Mille, Christian & Theuerkauf, Jörn, 2019, Distribution, habitats, phenology and conservation of New Caledonian Odonata, Zootaxa 4640 (1), pp. 1-112 : 86

Orthetrum serapia / sabina

Davies (2002) reported O. sabina (Drury, 1773) for New Caledonia and wrote that it was common. However, we never found this species during our field work. All specimens that we found were from the closely related O. serapia Watson, 1984 . Therefore, Davies (2002) might have misidentified O. serapia as O. sabina . When we published our key to New Caledonia and Wallis & Futuna ( Grand et al. 2014), we assumed that only O. sabina occurred on these archipelagos. We also found O. serapia and not O. sabina on Wallis and Futuna (authors’ unpublished data). To correct the error, we compare the diagnostic features of both species in Figure 91 .

Distribution ( Fig. 92 ). Orthetrum sabina has a wide range within the Afrotropical, Oriental, Australasian and Oceanic regions ( Tsuda 2000). It even reaches in the north the southern borders of the Palearctic region, from Tunisia in the west to Japan in the east ( Tsuda 2000). Orthetrum serapia is distributed wide across the Pacific reaching Australia to the west and Tonga to east ( Marinov & Waqa-Sakiti 2013). Both species are present in the Northern Territory and north east of Australia ( Theischinger & Hawking 2006), therefore their coexistence in New Caledonia is not to be excluded.

However, in a recently published study on the Odonata fauna of Vanuatu Marinov et al. (2019) reported O. serapia for the islands of Efate and Malekula but not for Aneityum and suggested that the southern limit of the species distribution within the Pacific lays along 18– 19°S which is just at the northern most end of Grande Terre of New Caledonia. In Australia ( Theischinger & Endersby 2009), the species reaches even further south to around 22°.

Habitat. Both species occur in sunny places at standing and running water and tolerates moderately salinity.

Biology and behaviour. The larva of O. sabina was illustrated by Lieftinck (1962). Its habits are similar to O. caledonicum .

Status. Due to the lack of information on we rank these species DD.

Figures

FIGURE 91. Comparison between: a) Orthetrum sabina, female, Malaysia (E. Nielsen), and b) O. serapia, female, Futuna Island (J. Theuerkauf). Note the difference in the pattern on the dorsum of S4–6.

FIGURE 92. Records of Orthetrum sabina/serapia.