Sedgling (Nehalennia speciosa) |
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The Sedgling is Europe's smallest and one of its rarest damselfly species. Apart from a few scattered sites in Germany (where we made our photographs of the species), it tends to occur only in North-Eastern Europe. Nehalennia speciosa is a truly tiny, slender and delicate-looking species.
Its main characteristic features (apart from its diminutive size) include the absence of postocular spots which instead are replaced by a curved light-blue line, and its typically creamy-white pterostigma. Its thorax and abdomen are a metallic green dorsally while the lower sides are typically a powdery light blue (or, in mature females, a rusty brown).
For an overview of the Sedgling's distribution in Europe, hover your mouse pointer over the map symbol . With the authors' permission we have based this map on data published in Kalkman et al. (2010). Legend: Red = Occurs, White = Doesn't occur; Purple = Extinct; Yellow = Vagrant.
Hover your mouse pointer over a thumbnail below to display a larger version of it. Or click on a thumbnail to display the photograph (at 1050 x 700 pixels) in a new window. And then, if you'd like to get even closer, you can drag the ZoomBox from the top-left corner of that window across the photograph. Note that you may have to refresh the window manually (by pressing F5 on your keyboard) for the ZoomBox to display correctly.
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