Two interesting female gomphids from the Nam Bung area.

Saturday July 11 I caught a small female gomphid near Nam Bung. I had never seen it before and studying it in hand revealed a very neat "horn" on the occipital ridge. Now, female gomphids very often have horns on their heads, but the shape of this one, like the tail of a diving whale ("fluking") is extra-ordinary. This pointed me to the genus Sinogomphus. This is, at least for me, really exciting. Last year in early May I had caught Sinogomphus leptocercus in the same general area, but thereafter the species remained elusive, in spite of several searches. I have no description of the female of this species, so I have to exercise some caution here. Nevertheless it is not very likely at all that there is another Sinogomphus species in the area (there are no Sinogomphus species known from Vietnam). So this should be the female of S. leptocercus!

Another female I caught is Leptogomphus divaricatus. This is not at all a rare species, being probably the commonest species in the north of the genus after L. perforatus. But I have not often seen the female and failed so far to take pictures of its distinctive divaricate horns. Glad to put that right!

First the female of Leptogomphus divaricatus, typical as Leptogomphids go.

But they can often be told apart by the horns on the occipital ridge. L. divaricatus has two that bend outward in opposite directions.

But look at this! Is this remarkable or what? Female Sinogomphus leptocercus. As if mommy bound her baby's hair together into a little palm tree.

Dorsal pattern fits several Sinogomphus species and of course also S. leptocercus.

The whole specimen in lateral view. The lateral pattern of the thorax is a little different from the male (see that entry), but otherwise patterning is similar.

Three more Gomphids from Yen Bai

Gomphids - I love them! So, when I spent last weekend in Yen Bai, I was a happy man, seeing 6 new species. In fact, one I had seen before, but this is the first time I had an adult in my hands. It is a species of which Sebastien already told me that it was quite common. I have seen it freshly emerged at low altitude in Tam Dao and here it was again higher up in Yen Bai Province. It is a Leptogomphus that looks very closely like L. perforatus, but has inferior appendages smoothly rounded. The hamules are also quite differently shaped, especially the anterior one.

The other two species, well…The first I saw about 6 of. It is an easy species to recognize, or so I thought, and it appears in quite open areas on wet rocky and muddy places, where is sits on the ground, on rocks or on leaves. It was a Heliogomphus and I did identify it as H. scorpio, but subsequently I caught several H. scorpio in Tam Dao and clearly it is a different species. I will come back to this in another posting (this part of text edited May 18). And I saw one interesting gomphid with slender white superior appendages that I subsequently identified as Sinogomphus leptocercus. This is quite a shock, as to my knowledge it is only known from Xizang, Tibet, although close to the Yunnan border. And admittedly the thorax pattern is darker. On the other hand, within Sinogomphus, this species is strange because of the thin and long superior appendages and broad inferiors. Moreover, the penile organ is also a close match. If not this species, than it is something very closely related but as yet undescribed. Unless, of course, someone has a better suggestion.

Sinogomphus leptocercus, male

The penile organ. Compare the drawings in Chao (1990)

The weird appendages in dorsal view

In ventral view

And finally in lateral view

Leptogomphus sp., as far as we have been able to check, undescribed but common.

The appendages in dorsal view, note the smoothly rounded shape

The same in ventral view

The hamules in lateral view, compare with those of L. perforatus below

Hamules of Leptogomphus perforatus for comparison

And finally male Heliogomphus sp.

Perched on a leaf, an easily recognizable species (May 18 edited: not at all that easy, this is not scorpio after all)

The appendages in dorsal view, see also posting on H. scorpio and differences