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User / Cyprus Bird Watching Tours / Sets / Dragonfly & Damselfly (Odonata)
Matthew Smith / 326 items

Odalisque ♂ (Epallage fatime (Charpentier, 1840)) IUCN LC
N 16 B 2.6K C 3 E May 10, 2017 F May 10, 2017
  • DESCRIPTION
  • COMMENT
  • O
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  • M

Range Description:
Epallage fatime has mostly a southwestern Asian distribution. The easternmost records are from Afghanistan, Pakistan (Quetta) (Schmidt 1961) and North India (Subramanian 2009). From there it extends to the West up to the southeast of Bulgaria, Greece and the south of Macedonia. It remains scattered throughout Iran although it is lacking in the central desert, and is rather common in the whole of Asia Minor and the Levant. European populations are small and the species is difficult to find in the west of its range.

Countries occurrence:
Native:
Afghanistan; Armenia (Armenia, Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh); Azerbaijan; Bulgaria; Cyprus; Georgia (Gruziya); Greece (East Aegean Is., Greece (mainland)); Iran, Islamic Republic of; Israel; Jordan; Lebanon; Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic of; Pakistan; Palestinian Territory, Occupied; Syrian Arab Republic; Turkey (Turkey-in-Asia, Turkey-in-Europe); Turkmenistan

Population:
Epallage fatime is very scattered in the south of the Balkans and the species shows an overall low density in its European range, where generally only single isolated specimens are met. It is much more common in SW Asia, particularly in Anatolia. Iranian populations seem dispersed throughout most of the country, except in the central desert area.

Habitat and Ecology:
Epallage fatime occurs in hilly and mountainous areas. It is exclusively found in permanent running waters, most often in brooks and small rivers, sometimes also, in small numbers, in larger rivers. Larvae live under stones at places with high current. The legs are placed in an outstretched position and the abdomen and legs are flattened, both are probably adaptations to living in a strong current. The species is lacking from habitats where there is no year-round current. Adults are found near the water, resting on stones or on the vegetation near the water.

Systems:
Terrestrial; Freshwater

Major Threat(s):
Most of habitats where this species occurs lie in hilly and mountainous areas and are relatively save from large scale agricultural practices. The main future threat for this species seems to be climate change, which is in risk to change river systems from permanent to seasonal and to result to increased water piping. Many new irrigation and capture devices starting from tiny springs and headwater courses have been recently installed throughout Greece to compensate the present rainfall deficit. There is a risk that such poor management will be used in the Asian part of the species range as well.

Conservation Actions:
The species is not strongly threatened at the global scale in the near future but the long term trend for many hydrosystems seems to be a shift from permanent to seasonnal, giving rise to local extinctions for this species

Assessment:
The present and future decline of this species, if any, is mostly under the permanence of perennial running waters preserved from pollution. The species will probably be impacted by a shift of several of its habitats from permanent to seasonal brooks due to climate change. It is not unlikely that this will result in a significant decline of the species in the European and even more in the Levantine parts of its range, in the future. This impact is believed to remain low in the core of its range (Anatolia and Iran), so that the species is assessed Least Concern for the next decade.

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