Sedgling
(Nehalennia speciosa)

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.

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