Guwahati: A new dragonfly species spotted central Assam’s Tezpur has been named after two celebrated women for their pioneering work in the Northeast.
The new species of dragonfly, Brahmaputra Picktail – Platygomphus benritarum, has been after Monisha ‘Ben’ Behal and Rita Banerji for working on women’s right, youth empowerment and social change.
While Monisha Behal is a founder member of North East Network (NEN), a Guwahati-based NGO working for women empowerment, Rita Banerji is founder of Green Hub.
The new dragonfly species was spotted by researchers Shantanu Joshi and Anuja Mital, who came across two interesting in June, 2020 near the banks of the Brahmaputra in Tezpur.
While Platygomphus benritarum is a new species, another Anormogomphus heteropterus was rediscovered after many decades.
The study has been published in the International Journal of Odonatology.
Dragonflies and damselflies belong to the order Odonata of insects.
Joshi said in India, around 490 species are known but this number keeps increasing as new species are described, and new species are recorded for the first time from India.
He said one of these dragonflies belonged to the species Anormogomphus heteropterus was recorded from India with certainty after many decades.
The other one collected from the banks of the mighty Brahmaputra river turned out to be a completely new species belonging to the Picktails (Platygomphus spp.), Shantanu said.
The new species- Platygomphus benritarum found resting on a large Ficus tree situated about 5–6 meters from the banks of the Brahmaputra river near the Rudra Padh Temple in the evening.
“The habitat along the banks is dominated by grasses, sparse trees, paddy fields and marshlands, along with some forest patches and tree plantations. Platygomphus spp. (especially P. dolabratus) are known to prefer lowland rivers with sandy banks and sparse vegetation, which also seems to apply to this species,” the study says.
Anormogomphus heteropterus was observed on the terrace of a residential building while resting on an ornamental plant.
This building is situated in a semi-urban area, surrounded by many buildings. There are some ponds nearby and the Brahmaputra River is about a km away.
Anormogomphus spp are weak fliers known to occur in sandy areas.