Spoon-tailed duskhawker: Arunachal find fattens India’s dragonfly list

Arunachal Pradesh records its first spoon-tailed duskhawker dragonfly, enhancing India’s dragonfly species list significantly. Photo: Special Arrangement

GUWAHATI The first verifiable photographic evidence of the spoon-tailed duskhawker (Gynacantha basiguttata) in Arunachal Pradesh has fattened India’s dragonfly list.

A team of five researchers had worked on dragonflies in the 1,985 sq. km Namdapha National Park and Tiger Reserve. A single male, hanging vertically from vegetation in a densely shaded area on a cloudy day, was photographed in October 2024 on the Miao-Vijaynagar Road inside the tiger reserve and was initially recorded as the Gynacantha khasiaca.

A taxonomical correction, however, revealed that the brown and blue-green dragonfly was the spoon-tailed duskhawker, which was originally described from the Philippines and is found in several parts of Southeast Asia.

Their findings were published in the latest issue of the Journal of Threatened Taxa. The authors are Karnataka-based R. Mahesh and Rajesh Gopinath, Maharashtra-based Dattaprasad Sawant, Uttarakhand-based Gaurav Joshi, and Roshan Upadhaya from Arunachal Pradesh.

G. basiguttata was identified from the morphological features visible in the photographs. These included a black T-shaped mark on the frons (forehead or front part of the head), an olive-green thorax without a stripe, distinctive wing pigmentation, and narrow, expanded cerci (pair of small, jointed feelers) that give the abdominal appendages a spoon-like appearance.

No physical specimen was collected in accordance with forest regulations and the Wildlife (Protection) Amendment Act, 2022, the researchers said.

“Although older literature mentions the presence of G. basiguttata in India, that record was considered doubtful because it was based only on female specimens. The species was subsequently excluded from recent Indian and South Asian Odonata checklists,” they said.

Odonata is an order of predatory flying insects that includes the dragonflies and damselflies.

After verification, the researchers recommended including the spoon-tailed duskhawker in the country’s Odonata checklist.