quick key to KD's work
dragonflies and freshwater life
What are dragonflies good for? We don’t eat them like fish, nor do they pollinate our crops like many other insects. We admire them first for their beauty and only second for the mosquitoes they devour. Only such an unconditional attitude towards all life might spare us our most destructive inclinations: when we protect their habitat for their sake, we also protect our own.
books and sites
Fieldguide to Europe’s dragonflies and damselflies — most successful publication on Odonata ever, second edition out in 2020
ADDO: African Dragonflies and Damselflies Online — over 900 pages on identification, ecology and distribution of continent’s Odonata
Sixty new dragonfly species from Africa — most new Odonata named at once in a century, adding one to every twelve African species
Dragonflies and damselflies of eastern Africa — handbook to 500 species, two-thirds of continent’s Odonata
Dragonflies and damselflies of Madagascar — bilingual fieldguide to 225 species of the western Indian Ocean islands
key papers
Freshwater Biodiversity and Aquatic Insect Diversification — why inland waters are so species rich (in Annual Review of Entomology)
Consensus classification of dragonflies — first list of Odonata families agreed by all experts (in Zootaxa)
Most complete damselfly phylogeny to date — first extensive molecular review of Zygoptera (in Systematic Entomology)
Reclassifying Odonata using targeted genomics — the order's best supported phylogeny (in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution)
African Dragonfly Biotic Index — using dragonfly species to assess freshwater sites throughout Africa (in Ecological Indicators)
Diversity and conservation of African dragonflies — first Red List for insects of tropical continent (in Frontiers Ecology & Environment)
Dragonflies enter the biodiversity crisis debate — first global estimate of extinction risks in insects (in Biological Conservation)
species sense
When I was nine, my first bird book planted a powerful idea in my mind: every species had an essence I could name, depict and retell. Each identity can instill us with a sense of the living whole we belong to, a sense of place, and —by observing closely— a sense of how this multiverse and all worlds within it can change. Species, effectively, give Earth personality. They make it worth saving.
read
Restore our sense of species — tribute to natural history and Attenborough’s legacy (comment in journal Nature)
“Deadly mosquito” or “living freshwater”? — honor rather than demonize freshwater life (letter to journal Science)
KD's taxa: species are stories — showcase of the species, genera and families I discovered and named
watch
A new dragonfly for Attenborough’s 90th birthday — presenting it to Sir David on BBC One
Africa, freshwater, and dragonflies — plenary on exploration for 7th International Barcode of Life Conference
Changing lives with the Tropical Biology Association — the difference TBA field courses make
Congo dragonfly hunt — catching new species in Katanga’s Upemba National Park
signed calls
A strategy for the next decade to address data deficiency in neglected biodiversity — 16 authors (in Conservation Biology )
Towards global volunteer monitoring of odonate abundance — 32 authors (in BioScience)
International scientists formulate a roadmap for insect conservation and recovery — 73 authors (in Nature Ecology & Evolution)
A global agenda for advancing freshwater biodiversity research — 96 authors (in Ecology Letters)
Taxonomy based on science is necessary for global conservation — 184 authors (in PLOS Biology)
bits about me
My first guide was to European birds. But we lived in Egypt, so on my tenth birthday I began to write and draw my own. With no book for dragonflies at all, I started to describe and name them at twelve. Later I’d learn that my ‘blood red dragonfly’ and ‘grass dragonfly’ were male and female of just one species, the Broad Scarlet. Eight years after naming a Vagrant Emperor the ‘hairy dragonfly’ as a boy, my friends and I found the first one in The Netherlands. From then my passion for dragonflies was fully fledged.
curriculum vitae — see highlights or download PDF (March 2022)
publications — download list (March 2022; most PDFs are accessible on ADDO) or check Google Scholar
contact — send an email or find me on Twitter