Second edition of the Dragonfly Identification Guide for France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland

Jean-Pierre Boudot, Guillaume Doucet and Daniel Grand, who are among the leading French specialists on dragonflies, have published the second edition of the Dragonfly Identification Guide for France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland. Updating a previous version that appeared 4 years ago, this work  presents, for instance, a species of dragonfly that has arrived straight from the African continent and has just crossed the Pyrenees. Conversely, other species often found until now in France’s temperate zones are today much more difficult to observe.  An additional warning sign of the impact of global warming and the alterations made by humans to natural habitats …

Trithemis kirbyi: an Afrotropical dragonfly observed for the first time in mainland France

Firmly established in Spain since 2007, the dragonfly species Trithemis kirbyi crossed the Pyrenees for the first time during the heatwaves of 2017 and 2018.  At that time it was observed in the Aude and in the Ardèche departments.  Although those arrivals only seem, at this stage, to concern migrating or erratic individuals making the most of hot air movements coming from Africa, given the multiplication of these phenomena we can expect that this species may come to reproduce and establish itself permanently in the south of France.  It would thus follow the behaviour patterns of its conspecific, T. annulata, which has very recently created some bridgeheads in Touraine after having colonised the whole French Mediterranean coast and Aquitaine within twenty years.

For further information

You can find updated distribution maps for all the dragonflies in  France in the second edition of the Dragonfly Identification Guide for France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland, published by the Éditions Biotope (February 2019).

You can also read an interview with Jean-Pierre Boudot in the “Journal de Dimanche” for April 2019.