Paper on The Dragonflies and Damselflies of Oxfordshire - just published!

As you some of you may be aware, Fritillary is the journal of the The Ashmolean Natural History Society of Oxfordshire. It has been sometime in the preparation, but Issue 10 of Fritillary is a special edition devoted to a paper on the The Dragonflies and Damselflies of Oxfordshire written by your County recorder.  

This has just now been published on-line and can be downloaded from this page on the ANHSO website. 

To download this paper, go to this webpage

If you have any interest in the Odonata of Oxfordshire, please take a look. The paper runs to 100 pages and includes plenty of figures and the author's photographs.

Summary

The paper provides a timely update on the status of dragonflies in Oxfordshire, as it is now just over 25 years since the last publication, by Anthony Brownett. Since then, our knowledge of these charismatic insects has improved immeasurably through substantially increased interest and much improved recording. At least seven new species have been seen in Oxfordshire since 1996 and the distributions of many species have changed significantly, with several having dramatically expanded their range.

Some introductory information on dragonflies is included, and a description of the current main habitats for dragonflies in Oxfordshire is given. Brief information is also provided on the best sites for seeing them. A key section is a Systematic List of all 37 species that have been recorded in the County.

Within the Systematic List, maps are given showing all records within the National Biodiversity Network (NBN) Atlas database for each species. These records date back to around 1900 in many cases, although recording prior to around 1990 was at a small fraction of the level it is at now.

Results are also given of an analysis which quantifies how the numbers of records of an individual species have changed over time, relative to the total numbers of records for all species. The main aim of this analysis is to show how the relative recording frequencies of individual species have changed over time and so to highlight those that have increased and those that have decreased, relative to the total number of records received in each decade. 

In addition, phenology data was obtained from the NBN Atlas for first and last sighting dates and are compared with the corresponding information from Brownett (1996). 

Stephen Burch