Large red damselfly

Large red damselfly
Male, Dry Sandford Pit, Oxfordshire
Immature female, form typica, Cumnor Hill, Oxford
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Arthropoda
Class:	Insecta
Order:	Odonata
Suborder:	Zygoptera
Family:	Coenagrionidae
Genus:	Pyrrhosoma
Species:	P. nymphula
Binomial name
Pyrrhosoma nymphula (Sulzer, 1776)

The large red damselfly (Pyrrhosoma nymphula) is mainly a European damselfly, with some populations in Northern Africa and Western Asia.^[1]

Habitat

It inhabits ponds and dikes, and occasionally slow-moving rivers.

Identification

Females occur in three colour forms, but all have yellow bands around the abdominal segments. The form typica has more black on its abdominal segments than the form 'fulvipes', particularly segment 6. Immatures have lighter eyes and have yellow stripes on the thorax, not red.

• 
  male appendages
• 
  immature female, form typica
  Cumnor Hill, Oxford
• 
  mature female, form fulvipes
  Leek Wootton, Warwickshire

They can easily be confused with small red damselflies, but the latter has orange legs, while the large red damselfly has black legs. In Greece and Albania a closely related species occurs, the Greek red damsel (Pyrrhosoma elisabethae). They look very much the same, the females only having a slightly different pronotum with deep folds in the hind margin. The males differ in their lower appendages, which are longer than the upper ones, while the black hook on the lower appendages is half as long as in the large red damselfly. The appendages of the large red damselfly can be seen in the gallery below.

Behaviour

One of the most common damselflies, the large red damselfly is often the first damselfly to emerge, usually in April or May.

Gallery

• 
  in Belgium natural reserve Marie Mouchon
• 
  Mating, Craig-cefn-parc in South Wales
• 
  male eating insect
  Dry Sandford Pit, Oxfordshire
• 
  video of ovipostion

References

• "Pyrrhosoma nymphula - Large Red Damselfly". British Dragonfly Society. Retrieved 28 May 2011.