Dragonflies and Damselflies (Odonata)
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Glasgow Museums has a collection of approximately 600 dragonfly and damselfly specimens (Odonata) which date from 1883 to the present.
This collection contains dried, pinned and card-mounted adult insects and cast larval skins, as well as some dried specimens in envelopes. Around one third of these specimens are from the British Isles (predominantly Scotland). There are representatives of approximately three-quarters of British species. The earliest specimens in the collection were donated by the Glasgow Natural History Society in 1883. Just under two thirds of the foreign collection originate from Central and Eastern Africa, particularly Zimbabwe and Zambia, and were collected by Richard C. Dening. He collected with the well-known entomologist, Elliott Pinhey, who was responsible for naming more than a tenth of known Afrotropical species of dragonflies and damselflies. Pinhey named a damselfly ‘Dening’s sprite’ (Pseudagrion deningi) in honour of Dening. Glasgow Museums has an allotype of Pseudagrion deningi. Other foreign specimens come from Germany, Russia, Nepal, India and the USA, with the material from Nepal collected during the Bowes-Lyon expedition in 1962. There are specimens from France, Spain, Greece, and Trinidad which were collected by Glasgow Museums former Keeper of Natural History, E. G. Hancock. The material from Trinidad was collected during his field trips in the 1990s with Glasgow University.
About damselflies and dragonflies
There are approximately 5,600 species of damselflies and dragonflies worldwide; about 49 species are resident in the British Isles. They are voracious predators, as adults and nymphs, of other invertebrates, like butterflies, bees and gnats, and small vertebrates, like tadpoles and small fish. They typically spend their nymph stages in freshwater. - Broader term
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