quick key to KD's work

dragonflies and freshwater life

Dancing over rivers and ponds, the thousands of colourful dragonfly and damselfly species that cohabit our planet seem of little importance. But what conveys the condition of freshwater, life’s most bountiful environment and the most limiting resource on land, as well as they can?

    books and sites

Dragonflies and Damselflies of the World — first guide to their global diversity, evolution, and significance

Fieldguide to Europe’s dragonflies and damselflies — most successful publication on Odonata to date

ADDO: African Dragonflies and Damselflies Online — over 900 pages on their identification, ecology, and distribution

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. 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.

field records — perhaps my observations (since 2017) say most about me

curriculum vitae — see highlights or download illustrated CV or full CV (March 2022)

publications — download full list (June 2024) or check Google Scholar or ResearchGate

contact — please send an email or find me (somewhat reluctantly) on Facebook

These are links to the work of KD (Klaas-Douwe) B Dijkstra. Get in touch if you have questions or comments.