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Australian Species

Version 1 of The Complete Field Guide to Dragonflies of Australia (Gunther Theisinger and John Hawking) lists 112 Zygoptera (Damselflies) and 211 Anisoptera (Dragonflies) – 323 Odonata in all. I have added a recent addition so the list is now 324 species. I am not entirely sure how much use such an extensive list may be but since I jumped through a few hoops to format it as I like it, I thought I’d publish it anyway.

At the time of writing, I have now made three visits to Australia hunting dragonflies, one ad hoc whilst visiting relatives and two intense, led by Phil Benstead. My personal count of Ozzie species is now up to 107, if I’ve counted correctly. As with my other checklists, entries linked to species pages are those that I’ve seen.

For lists that are a manageable size, I generally stick to the sequence of species that the guide books use (which I confess I don’t understand). In this case, however, searching by eye for a species within a list of 300+ seemingly randomly sequenced names is very arduous; anything other than alphabetical seems to me less than useful. So here I’ve sorted them into alphabetical order within the suborders of Zygoptera and Anisoptera.

Zygoptera (Damselflies)

Anisoptera (Dragonflies)