Ljusröd ängstrollslända
(Sympetrum meridionale)

The Southern Darter occurs mainly in France, Italy, the Balkans and Greece. It's a medium-sized dragonfly. Sympetrum meridionale is really quite a nondescript species and as such is most easily identified by excluding the other, more characteristic Darter species. Its thorax and abdomen (orangey red in the male; yellow in the female) are pale and largely unmarked, and its legs are largely yellow. This species - maybe more than any other Darter - is very prone to being infested by parasitic mites (see some of our photographs below).

For an overview of the Southern Darter'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).

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.