Atlas of the Dragonflies and Damselflies of West and Central Asia

About this book

This is a supplement of the Dutch journal Brachytron. The book provides data for the entire area between the west coast of Turkey and Central Asia and all the way south to include the Arabian peninsula.

Based on a database of nearly 46,000 records (a species on a day at a location) the distribution of all 173 species of dragonflies and damselflies occurring in the 24 countries of West and Central Asia is presented. For practical reasons, Kazakhstan is not included in this atlas but Afghanistan is. Distributions are shown for two time periods: prior to 1990 (approximately 13,000 records) and from 1990 onwards (approximately 33,000 available records). The fauna of the region is a mixture of species of African, Oriental and Palearctic origin with, in total, 25 species being endemic to the region and another 25 species being near endemic with roughly over 80% of their world range found in the region. For each species, a short text is provided containing additional information on taxonomy, general and regional distribution, and also habitat preference. This is accompanied by at least one picture of an adult. The introduction contains a summary of the history of the study of dragonflies in each country of the region, including references to the most relevant papers. The article ends with a checklist tabulating the presence of each species in each of the relevant countries, and with a table showing the flight period of all species.

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