The dragonflies and damselflies (Insecta: Odonata) of Shendurney Wildlife Sanctuary, southern Western Ghats, India

: The odonate diversity of Shendurney Wildlife Sanctuary, southern Western Ghats (WG) of Kerala state, is discussed in this paper. A total of 181 species belonging to 87 genera and 14 families have been compiled for Kerala and this includes 68 Western Ghats endemics. A total of 116 species of odonates including 33 endemics were recorded for the region. A total of 41 damselflies ( Zygoptera) and 75 dragonflies (Anisoptera) were recorded for the sanctuary. Shendurney thus harbours 56.04 % of WG and 64.08 % of the odonate diversity of Kerala. In addition, this includes 48.52% of Kerala and 41.25 % of endemic odonates of Western Ghats. About 29% of all the species recorded for the Shendurney are endemic to WG. With respect to IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, one species is ‘Endangered’, three ‘Vulnerable’, two ‘Near Threatened’, 84 ‘Least Concern’, 20 ‘Data Deficient’, and six species whose IUCN Red List status was not assessed . Family Libellulidae (41 species) dominated the odonate diversity, followed by Coenagrionidae (15 species) and Gomphidae (13 species). Regarding the occurrence status, we found that 11 species were Very Common, 42 species were found to be Common, 34 species Not Rare, 10 species were Rare, and 19 species were Very Rare inside the sanctuary. None of the species listed is protected under the Indian Wildlife Protection Act 1972.


INTRODUCTION
The Shendurney Wildlife Sanctuary (8. 80-8.95 N, 77.07-77.27 E), with an area of 171 km 2 is located in the northern aspect of the Agasthyamalai hills of the southern Western Ghats and lies in the catchment of the Parappar Dam (Thenmalai) constructed across the west-flowing Kallada River (Image 1). The Achankovil gap separates this region from the Pandalam hills, which is the southernmost extension of the Annamalai Hills Complex. The Kuttalam (Courtallam) reserve forest lies to the north-east of the sanctuary. The state boundary of Kerala with Tamil Nadu delineates its eastern border. On the southeastern side lies the Papanasam RF and Mundanthurai region of the Kalakkad-Mundanthurai TR in Tamil Nadu. The southern boundary lies along the border of the Thiruvananthapuram Forest Division where Kulathupuzha and Yerur RFs lie in contiguity with the sanctuary. A narrow stretch of reserved forest tract of the Paruthipally range separates it from Peppara WS in the south (Nair 1991). Much of the terrain of the region is undulating, with valleys and high hills. The altitude ranges from 100 m at the base of the hill to 1,550 m on top of Alwarkurichi, the highest peak. The weather is hot and humid with 2,500-5,000 mm of rainfall received during both the monsoons (Nair 1991). The temperature varies from 16 °C to 35 °C (Mathew et al. 2004). Most of the region is accessible from strategically located base camps for biodiversity assessments. The Shendurney WS has good floral diversity (Subramanian 1995). The vegetation types found here are the west-coast tropical evergreen, southern hilltop tropical evergreen, westcoast tropical semi-evergreen, and southern subtropical hill forests, southern moist mixed deciduous forests, Ochlandra reed brakes, myristica swamp forest, and grasslands (Chandrashekaran 1962). Shendurney was relatively unexplored as far as odonates were concerned. There are no published papers on the odonate fauna of the sanctuary and the only available literature are the survey reports submitted by the TNHS to Shendurney WS from 2011 to 2021.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Eight basecamps at different elevations and habitats were used to assess the odonate diversity of the 171 km 2 sanctuary (Image 1). The entire sanctuary was systematically covered by using six base camps; located at Darbhakulam, Idimuzhangan, Kallar, Kattalapara, Pandimotta, Rockwood, Rosemala, and Umayar.
Transects were laid considering the location of water bodies at the basecamps. A standard transect length of 3 km, 3 m wide was covered in 3 hours and odonates were documented by a three-member team. Each station was covered using 30 such transects that were analysed for presence or absence data. The paper is based majorly on the field data from monthly visits to Shendurney WS since the year 2000. In addition, the consolidated report of systematic surveys done twice a year (May and December) in the sanctuary from 2010 to 2022 by TNHS, Trivandrum submitted to Shendurney WS, Kerala Forest Department , was also consulted.
The odonates were field-observed and photographed as far as possible with special consideration to the prothorax and anal appendages. With a valid research permit, few of the confusing species were caught, fieldobserved under loupe magnification (ZEISS EyeMag Pro 5x450 mm Carl Zeiss Meditec Inc.) and released. Photographs of interesting odonates and dead specimens in the field were taken with Canon EOS 70D DSLR fitted with a 180 mm macro lens and MPE 65 f 2.8 1-5x Lens (Canon Inc., Japan). Photographs of interesting odonates are included (Images 3-6).
The basic taxonomy of odonates follows Fraser (1933, J TT 1934, 1936 and is updated as per Kalkman et al. (2020). The current Odonata checklist and distribution for Kerala follows Subramanian & Babu (2017), Subramanian et al. (2018), Paulson et al. (2021), and Nair et al. (2021). The occurrence status is based on transect data with status as Very Common (VC) if seen in >75% transects, Common (C) if seen in 50 -75%, Not Rare (NR) is seen in 25-25% transects, Rare (R) in a case seen in 5-25%, and Very Rare (VR) is seen in <5% of the transects. The conservation status as per the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species is derived from the IUCN site http://www.iucnredlist. org (IUCN 2021). We define the occurrence status of a species as 'Locally Common' when it is commonly seen only in a particular location, habitat, station or elevation, but is rare when the transect or distribution data from the whole sanctuary is considered.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
A total of 116 species of odonates including 32 endemics were recorded for the Shendurney region, while the current checklist of odonates of WG is at 207 species with 80 endemics and that of Kerala state is 181 species (87 genera, 14 families) and 68 WG (Nair et al. 2021) (see Appendix 1). A total of 116 species of odonates including 32 endemics were recorded from Shendurney WS. Rao & Lahiri (1982) recorded 23 species from Silent Valley and New Amarambalam RF; Emiliyamma & Radhakrishnan (2000 reported 39 species from Parambikukam WS, Mathavan & Miller (1989) had reported 36 species from Periyar TR, Gnanakumar et al. (2012) had reported 55 species from Chimmony WS; Adarsh et al. (2015) gave a checklist of 48 species from Chinnar, and 82 species were observed from Thattaekkad bird sanctuary and its environs by Varghese et al. (2014). Palot & Kiran (2016) reported 93 species from Aaralam WS. Thus, it is to be noted that Shendurney WS has the highest species diversity of odonates amongst protected areas in Kerala state known as of present.
The species diversity was highest at Kattalapara (88 species), followed by Darbhakulam (72) and then Umayar (69 species) ( Figure 2A). The lowest numbers were at Pandimotta (35 species), but this station had some rare and endemic species (see Appendix I). The   (Fraser, 1924) 6 Euphaeidae Euphaea fraseri (Laidlaw, 1920) 7 Platycnemididae Caconeura risi (Fraser, 1931) (Fraser, 1924) *subspecies is endemic to WG (Kalkman et al. 2020). West-coast tropical evergreen, tropical semi-evergreen, secondary forests, Ochlandra reed patches, and riparian patches sanctuary has a good number of interesting records as stated below. Elattoneura tetrica (Laidlaw, 1917) was recorded from Kattalapara. Vestalis submontana Fraser, 1934, was locally common in the higher reaches of the mountains above 800 m (Image 3A). Euphaea cardinalis (Fraser, 1924) was usually seen confined to small streams of the hills (Image 3F), and Euphaea fraseri (Laidlaw, 1920) was generally restricted to low elevations (Image 3E); though they are occasionally found together after monsoons in low altitudes. Chlorogomphus xanthoptera (Fraser, 1919) is the sole member of Chlorogomphidae and was recorded only at high elevations at Pandimotta (Image 5B  Fraser, 1924 andI. travancorensis Fraser, 1931, are the commonest and seen in huge swarms in clearings on hills hawking insects at dusk. I. galeata Fraser, 1924, I. corona Fraser, 1921, and I. minima Fraser, 1931 are much rarer compared to the others in our observation. I. gomantakensis Subramanian et al., 2013 (Image 6H), was seen in the vicinity of Myristica swamps at Kattalapara. Macromidia donaldi donaldi (Fraser, 1924) is a low to mid-elevation species seen at the edges of large streams.

Endemic Status
We found 33 species from the Shendurney region which were strictly endemic to Western Ghats (Table  2). Thus, about 29 percent of the odonates of the Shendurney are Western Ghats endemics ( Figure 12C).

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Anaciaeschna martini Selys, 1897 Chlorogomphus xanthoptera (Fraser, 1919) Heliogomphus promelas (Selys, 1873)  www.threatenedtaxa.org The Journal of Threatened Taxa (JoTT) is dedicated to building evidence for conservation globally by publishing peer-reviewed articles online every month at a reasonably rapid rate at www.threatenedtaxa.org. All articles published in JoTT are registered under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License unless otherwise mentioned. JoTT allows allows unrestricted use, reproduction, and distribution of articles in any medium by providing adequate credit to the author(s) and the source of publication.