28. Microgomphus farrelli Makbun & Fleck, 2018

No: 28 / Family: Gomphidae / Genus: Microgomphus

Name: Microgomphus farrelli / Northern Scissortail* / แมลงปอเสือน้อยเหนือ

Habitat: Heavily forested streams with large boulders/sunspots 
Province(s): Chiang Mai
In flight: March / Sightings (by me): Rare

Easily confused with: Microgomphus chelifer; Microgomphus jurzitzai; Microgomphus svihleri 

*Name made up by me.

A beautiful medium-sized dragonfly I saw once (March 23, 2010), was an undescribed Microgomphus sp. I saw this at Ob Khan National Park, just outside Chiang Mai along the river which runs though it. It was happy to sit there and let me snap away for a few seconds.

It was eventually described and published in 2018 and, as I was the very first person to see it/photograph it, the authors kindly named it... Microgomphus farrelli. The species name "farrelli" is actually named after my surname, Farrell. This is one of the biggest honours I could every hope to achieve as a dragonfly enthusiast and something that will live on long after I have gone! I cannot thank Noppadon Makbun enough for his kindness and hope to repay him by finding many more species for Thailand, though, as you can see, it can take many years to find voucher specimens, compare them to all other species in the genus, describe it and then finally get the paper approved. 

The male

This is the male of the species, but I don't really know anything about its habitat, other than I saw it in the uplands along a fair-sized stream that contained lots of boulders. It was also heavily tree-lined. It landed just where the sun was poking through.

Many thanks once again to Noppadon Makbun for help with trying to identify this species.