A new Chlorogomphus for Vietnam

 Preparing to leave Vietnam in the spring and early summer of 2017 was difficult. So much to do still, so many riddles to solve. Late May I had the opportunity to go say goodbye to the Sa Pa area. I had now found a few good spots that were both rather pristine and just outside the National Park, so I could try without the guards looking over my shoulder to look for gomphids and chlorogomphids. On May 29 I worked my way down a slope and heavy brush to the small stream I knew was there inside the forest and stood there by the side of the stream for hours, amusing myself with many Anotogaster chaoi, but little else, until a large dragon fly by. I was able to catch it and stunned to see a large puzzling Chlorogomphid. Sadly it was a female and although it had some striking features, like colored wing bases and thin stripes between the larger ones on the side of the thorax, I could not connect it to a species. That is, until I saw photos of Chlorogomphus miyashitai Karube, 1995 in the bible of Haomiao Zhang on Chinese dragonflies. This properly set me on the path to identification. Chlorogomphus miyashitai was described in 1995 from 'Xien Khang' in northeastern Laos (Karube 1995). I think this refers to Xiang Khouang, a province in northeastern Laos, a region of high mountains, although the description has no other information on the habitat or the altitude of the type location. Haomiao Zhang reports it from the Pu'er region in Yunnan, where it occurs to 1500 m alt. The Laos Province is south of the Sa Pa region, but the Pu'er region borders the Vietnamese Lai Chau province and is thus not that far from Sa Pa. I caught my insect at approximately 1700 m alt. The dorsal pattern of S2, the pattern of the thorax and face, the wing coloration all point to Chlorogomphus miyashitai. Although not recorded from Vietnam previously, it fits well the known distribution, so its occurrence comes as no real surprise.

Female Chlorogomphus miyashitai in hand

Face in frontal view

Saying good-bye, a last visit to Xuan Son National Park

After 4 years of oding in Vietnam, I will be leaving. This blog will continue, because there is still a lot to publish. I have just been too busy trying to clean up some remaining issues. There simply was not enough time to write entries. Articles are the priority and even there I am behind. Not sure how many species the tally is, after 4 years. Probably around 440 species, but many first need a formal description. And then there is so much out there still to discover.

This spring and summer has been awful for dragonflies. It has just been cloudy and rainy. Some of the puzzles I wanted to solve therefore remain unsolved for now. But at least Sunday 23 July was a good and sunny day, even if I got soaked in the morning. The upside: only one leech lodged on my stomach.

Xuan Son has been wonderful, although the forest is being opened up by road building. I hope that will not lead to further incursions. The trees still stand and the stream remain good. Not sure how many species I actually saw there, somewhere in the range of 125-135 species. With several new species described and several more on the way. So, with the promise of some sun, this is where I went for my very last outing.

And to my huge surprise I ran not into 1, not 2, but 3 species I had not recorded there before. The first was a male Orthetrum melania superbum, a subspecies of O. melania described, and also only recorded, from Yen Bai. A large and conspicuous dragonfly that apparently tolerates abysmal conditions (puddles with muddy, water buffalo dung infested, water), but is nevertheless hardly ever seen. A single male attended a small pond. Fantastic.

This remains one of the most beautiful Orthetrum species I have seen 

By the early afternoon I wanted a change of scenery and drove to a nearby hill in the forest and noticed a dragonfly seemingly ovipositing on the wet concrete road. I got out and caught it and was very surprised to see it was a male, so why was it dipping its body in the wetness of the concrete? And it was a Chlorogomphus, in fact it was C. auratus, which I had never recorded in the park before. I guess I focus too much on the one fantastic stream, but ignore trickles on other mountains.

What is splendid discovery, Chlorogomphus auratus

Further afield still I wanted t check the area on the other side of the central hamlet and stopped by a small stream. A tiny trail ran next to it and I went in to see what it had to offer. And bumped into a small, Coeliccia pyriformis-sized, Coeliccia with large pale blue dorsal markings, a little like larger C. uenoi, but more rounded, and much like the even larger species we are currently describing from Ba Be. Indeed, under the microscope it is clearly closely related to that species, with similar genital ligula, similar appendages (although details differ), but obviously different thorax pattern and abdomen pattern (apart from the total insect being smaller than the abdomen of the Ba Be species alone, which is very robust).

To make sure it was not just aberrant I searched high and low and eventually, in a rather different location, was able to locate a second male, which was exactly like the first. How wonderful, to wrap up Vietnam with a new species of Coeliccia (coincidentally the 9th species of the genus occurring in Xuan Son, amazing).

Wonderful Coeliccia spec. nov. 

Close up of the thorax

So, back to the Netherlands and time to write up in earnest!

Chlorogomphus aritai - another of those magnificent species

Early May last year I was driving along route 14 through Thua Thien - Hue Province, close to the Laotian border. From the corner of my right eye I noticed a large butterfly floating above some bushes by the roadside. But no, a dragonfly! There is very little traffic on route 14 at this point, so I confidently slammed on the brakes and jumped out the car. A magnificent large Chlorogomphid was cruising nearby with colored wings. I was able to catch it and take some in hand shots, before putting it on a bush for some posed photos. Soon after she (it was female) flew off into the nearby forest. What a truly magnificent specimen. I was under the impression it was Chlorogomphus caloptera, but it turned out it was Chlorogomphus aritai, a species described in 2013 by Haruki Karube on the basis of specimens from Bach Ma National Park. Bach Ma centers on mountains close to the sea near Da Nang, but in fact that is not at all far from where I found it, as Vietnam is very narrow at this point. Although the female of C. aritai is superficially similar to the female of C. caloptera, they are not that closely related within the genus. Haruki places C. aritai in the subgenus Nubatamachlorus with C. nakamurai, another species with a female possessing colorful wings, although not nearly as striking as in C. aritai. These species are sought after by insect collectors, and as they are all scarce and under pressure of many negative environmental impacts, this is highly regrettable. I was happy to see her unharmed and hope I will encounter her offspring this year.

Fantastic Chlorogomphus aritai female, posed

The same female in hand before release

Chlorogomphidae - just beautiful

Over these 2 years I have been lucky enough to encounter many species from the Chlorogomphidae. A tip of the Iceberg, but I am not complaining. Almost all are spring species, with a few lingering on into early summer. This year I caught up with a species that earlier I had failed to see, although I went looking for it in Cao Bang Province in an area where it is not uncommon. This was magical Chlorogomphus papilio. There are actually quite a few Chlorogomphids with colorful wings, but this species stands out. In most species it is the female that has colorful wings, but in C. papilio it is the male that is wonderfully striking. It inhabits medium-sized streams with some rocks and I have encountered it at least at 4 different sites scattered around the province.

This is one of the first specimens I observed. I had already seen it the evening before, hunting high over the forest, but the second day could take a few photos of it. Even at long distance with a telephoto lens it is recognizable! I was so very excited. In fact, at a distance the translucent parts are difficult to see and it truly looks like a butterfly.

This is another male in hand. They have quite a slow and deliberate flight when patrolling.

Scan of a male in dorsal view. Luckily this species is not all that rare, although the river systems it inhabits are vulnerable to all sorts of pollution.

 Another magnificent species is C. auratus. This species was considered near-threatened according to IUCN, because of the scarcity of records, although it had been found at Tam Dao and in Central Lao PDR. It is however one of the commoner species and I have seen it in Yen Bai Province, in Cao Bang Province, in Lang Son Province and in Ninh Binh Province, and sometimes in surprisingly disturbed areas. The female has beautifully colored wings.

A female posed in Cuc Phuong, where it co-occurs with C. nakamurai, although much less common

In this dorsal view scan of a female the golden-brown wings with dark-brown tips are more obvious.

And the last colorful-winged species I would like to introduce here is female C. nakamurai. This female is very similar in wing-pattern to C. albomarginatus, but is a shade lighter and has dark wingtips. Apparently this species is also known from former Ha Tay Province, but I do not know the location of Mount Tan Vien. The only well established population seems to be in Cuc Phuong National Park, where it is in fact surprisingly common in the few available shallow streams. But water availability is low in the forest, so in absolute numbers it is certainly not abundant. Males patrol incessantly, but females drop down from the canopy and then flutter in dark shady places close to the surface. They keep on moving about while ovipositing left and right and are not easy to take pictures of in their dark surroundings.

A female fluttering low over leaf litter in the dark. Compare the female of C. albomarginatus, a mountain species, on Sebastian's blog.

An old female in dorsal view. Note the dark wingtips and brown, not black coloring.

An exciting new Chlorogomphus and an old acquaintance

When I met Haruki Karube on May 2 at Mau Son mountain he had just explored streams in the Central Highlands in Da Lat. He was kind enough to show me a specimen of the beautiful Chlorogomphus caloptera, which he described as recently as 2013. A female, and that is a beautiful creature.

Never mind the hand, focus on the wonderful wing pattern of this female Chlorogomphus caloptera.

The same female in lateral view

And her face in frontal view

On May 9 I was in Ha Tinh Province, not quite Da Lat, but the south of the north, if you catch my drift. In the lowlands I visited a stream with Toan when we discovered a female Sinorogomphus. In hand I could identify it as S. sachiyoae. This is another species described by Karube, but much longer ago, in 1995. Although originally thought to be restricted in range, it has now been found from Cao Bang Province all the way south to Ha Tinh Province, making it one of the more wide-spread species.

Sinorogomphus sachiyoae female. Note the characteristic pattern on S1-2. They do not always have such extensive basal patches, although it is not abnormal.

Some Chlorogomphids

It was already quite late in the Chlorogomphid season when we started traveling around northern Vietnam, thus we only recorded 6 species from this family, out of 17 mentioned by Karube (2013) as occurring in Vietnam (we now know that Sinorogomphus hiten also occurs in Vietnam, so there are at least 18 species). As Karube mentions, Pia Oac Nature Reserve in Cao Bang Province is a great place for them, with 7 recorded species. The most common species there seems to be Chlorogomphus piaoacensis. We encountered many of them all over the general Pia Oac area, very common at the end of June, but already far less by the second week of July. At the same streams this species was flying, we also caught two similar species that had not yet been recorded from Pia Oac. The first of these, surprisingly, was Chlorogomphus (Sinorogomphus) tunti. This species is known from western China and central Vietnam. It has highly distinctive appendages, the most important clue in the identification of most species. The second was Chlorogomphus (Sinorogomphus) sachiyoae. This species until recently was only known from Tam Dao, but occurs much more widely. Sebastien for in stance was the first to find it at Xuan Son and I found it also in northern Bac Kan Province and thus also at Pia Oac in Cao Bang Province.
The fourth species I was lucky enough to encounter at Pia Oac was Chlorogomphus takakuwai. This species had already been recorded from Pia Oac and is also known from Tam Dao and Lao Cai Province. I saw only one female, ovipositing under forest cover in a shallow stream. The fifth species I saw during the trip was Chlorogomphus auratus, with one female on mount Mau Son and a possible female in Cao Bang Province. Below some photos. And no, these are not all the same species! The thing fascinating about Chlorogomphid species, especially Sinorogomphids) is that they look very much alike, share the same general habitat and behavior. It is truly a mystery why and how so many different species can co-occur in such proximity.

Male Chlorogomphus (Sinorogomphus) piaoacensis, the commonest species in Pia Oac (but nowhere else?). Note the pattern on S1-2 and the highly distinctive appendages (with the tooth-brush shaped superiors, see below).

Clearly not the same species! Chlorogomphus (Sinorogomphus) tunti, male.

Obviously the same species as directly above, another Chlorogomphus (Sinorogomphus) tunti male.

Chlorogomphus (Sinorogomphus) sachiyoae. Clearly different from the two previous species. Note pattern of S1-2 and lack of apical spot on S7. This one captured in Bac Kan Province.

Another Chlorogomphus (Sinorogomphus) sachiyoae, this one captured in Pia Oac Nature Reserve on same stream as C. piaoacensis and C. tunti.

A very different specimen and not just because it is a female. Chlorogomphus (Petaliorogomphus) takakuwai. Note orange wing bases and distinctive marking on S1-2.

Highly distinctive rounded superior appendages without branches of C. piaoacensis.

And in dorsolateral view, showing distinctive toothbrush shape

And in even more detail

The same for C. sachiyoae. Rounded, but with clear branch at halfway point

Appendages of C. sachiyoae in lateral view, showing distinctive shape of apex.

Dorsal view of the deeply forked superior appendages of C. tunti

The same in lateral view, showing the downward angle in the stem of the superior appendage

Chlorogomphus auratus on Mau Son mountain

On June 7, when climbing the road to Mau Son mountain, at a small stream in a pine forest plantation, we encountered several Chlorogomphids that upon capture turned out to be Chlorogomphus auratus. This species is known from only a handful sites in Laos, Northern Vietnam and Southern China. It has been recorded before from Mau Son, but given the paucity of records, it is encouraging that it occurred in degraded and replanted forest.

Chlorogomphus auratus, male

Dorsal view of male Chlorogomphus auratus

A cute face goes a long way

The highly distinctive appendages

Chlorogomphus nakamurai

August 1 was an auspicious day, but when roaming inundated grasslands at Cuc Phuong that was not immediately obvious. There were really not that many dragonflies about. Which was strange and I did not like it much. But boring as it was, all of a sudden a large dragonfly wizzed by while I was standing in the middle of a grassy swamp. Not being able to move, I was happy to see it made a big u-turn and tried to wizz by once more. Haha, in the net. To my surprise it was a male Chlorogomphus, a species I did not expect in the open. Research on the photos later showed it to be Chlorogomphus nakamurai, a rare species only known from Cuc Phuong and described in 1995 by Karube.

Posed upon release, Chlorogomphus nakamurai, male

In the hand in all its splendor

Kind enough to show its penis

Lateral view of S10 and appendages

Frontal view of facial pattern