Pantala flavescens

  Pantala Flavescens, popularly known as “Globe skimmer” or “wandering glider” due to its migratory bahaviour, is one of the most widespread dragonflies of the World, present in South America, Africa, India, China, Japan, Australia, inhabits all continents except Europe.

Due to the proximity between Canary island and Continental Africa we thought that there was a Strong possibility that they could  reach our islands and probably to get settled in them, in fact there are some works that talk about this fact, now we have the prove that, finally, Pantala flavescens flies in Gran Canaria.

At the beginning of january, after some days of “Calima” (southern winds coming from Sahara Desert) we saw one “different” dragonfly overflying a little water reservoir in the southeastern part of Gran Canaria,  it had a different behaviour to all our known species in the island, and we started to suspect…..It never stopped, and the pictures we took were too far away to identify it.

But some days after that, we returned to that place and managed to take a decent picture for getting a definite ID to this “new dragonfly” some days after that two good friends found and photographed another one stopped on a branch.

Now we can proudly say that we have found and pictured the 11th species of dragonfly in Gran Canaria, they probably arrive in good years with favorable winds from Continental Africa but unfortunately we haven´t fount that they settle and reproduce here,  we´ll be watching….


Mi agradecimiento a Pablo Martínez-Darve por la redacción del texto y traducción al inglés de esta entrada.