Odonata in the World Wide Web

Contrary to other lists of odonatological links currently available on the web, this list shall neither be an exhaustive nor an objective collection, but shall only include real topsites. Since many websites contain rather poor informations that are hardly worth the online costs of a visit, I herewith provide an annotated selection of the best odonatological sites I could find on the Worldwide Web. I did not include any sites that contain either only trivial informations or only internal informations of dragonfly societies, but only websites that contain either substantial biological informations about odonates and / or high quality pictures of odonates. However, since I could not yet check all available sites, the non-inclusion of any site does not necessarily imply that it is not an excellent website. If you think that your site meets the above criteria, but was not yet included, please contact me by email to Günter Bechly

Dennis Paulson's Odonata Web Site, University of Pudget Sound
Comment: This very large website contains are very uptodate worldlist of all extant species with synonyms (also available as PDF, a list of the scientific and common names of North American Odonata, as well as species lists of the odonate fauna of Washington, Idaho, and Alaska, as well as Mexico (by state), Middle America (by country), West Indies (by island), and South America (by country). Furthermore, it contains field keys to the Odonata of Alaska and Washington, a large collection of photos of Odonata in superb quality, as well as tips for collecting and preserving and an odonatological glossary.

Digital Dragonflies (Forrest Mitchell)
Comments: Definitely the most detailed dragonfly photos available on the web. Due to the high resolution the photos have many hundred kilobytes of size and thus require considerable time (and money) for download. This site also includes technical informations about the methods used to scan the pictures. Further similar pictures are available at the Digital Dragonfly Museum.

Bishop Museum - Hawaii Biological Survey
Comment: Unfortunately the previously very large website on the endangered Hawaiian endemic damselfly genus Megalagrion (with terrestrial larvae) by Dan Polhemus does no longer exist. However, there is still a gallery of adult Megalagrion and a gallery of their habitates, as well as some information on the most endagered species.

Ode News Cape Cod (Jackie Sones and Blair Nikula)
Comment: This excellent website contains the the fulltext of all issues of the newsletter Ode News Cape Cod, as well as lists of the odonate fauna of Cape Cod and Massachusetts, which includes about 200 of the most beautiful dragonfly photos available on the world wide web (or even at all). Furthermore this site provides the best and most complete collection of odonatological links.

Odonata Information Network OIN (Bill Mauffray)
Comment: This site contains the homepage of I.O.R.I. and a link to the homepage of the Dragonfly Society of the Americas - DSA that was formerly hosted by the OIN. Furthermore, there are informations about collecting and preserving odonates, odonatological announcements and events, as well as a link to a large list of odonatological weblinks by Steve Valley.

Odonata Central - Dragonflies and Damselflies of North America
Comment: This site also contains the homepage of Dragonfly Society of the Americas - DSA and the e-mail directory of odonatologists that were formerly hosted by the OIN at IORI.

Roy Beckemeyer's Odonata Homepage
Comment: Besides a good collection of links and diverse informations on North American odonates, this websites contains a checklist of Kansas Odonata including distribution maps, an album with Odonata photos, an album with scanned Odonata pictures, and very good bibliographic lists to several odonatological topics, as well as an interesting page on fossil insects in general.

Swedish Odonata (Martin Peterson)
Comment: This website contains among numerous other informations, a key to Swedish damselflies, lists of the vernacular names of European odonates in various languages, and a very good collection of odonatological links.

Tree of Life Odonata page (John Trueman)
Comments: An interesting introduction to the phylogeny of the order Odonata, but also including general biological informations, e.g. about morphology and ecology.

James Cook University Odonata Webpage (Richard Rowe)
Comments: With photos of Australian and New Zealand odonates and online versions of some important historical works on Odonata, such as Tillyard 1917 The Biology of Dragonflies.

Odonata of Japan (Takashi Aoki)
Comments: With photos and videos of Japanese odonates, as well as many interesting information.

Homepage of the International Dragonfly Fond IDF (Martin Lindeboom)
Comments: Unfortunately, this website does not seem to have been updated after 2002, and the IDF seems to be disfunct. Nevertheless, there are still some informations on IDF, supported projects, and a world species list. At a separate site there is information about the two published CD-ROMs "Dragonfly Research", but this service seems to be disfunct as well.

Last Update: 6th May, 2009

LEGAL DISCLAIMER FOR GERMANY:
Am 12. Mai 1998 hat das Landgericht Hamburg entschieden, dass man durch die Anbringung eines Links die Inhalte der verlinkten Seite ggf. mitzuverantworten hat (Aktz. 312 0 85/98). Dies kann - so das LG- nur dadurch verhindert werden, dass man sich ausdrücklich von diesen Inhalten distanziert. Deshalb gilt für alle Links, die sich auf meinen Webseiten befinden folgendes: Für den Inhalt der einzelnen gelinkten Homepages ist ausschließlich der betreffende Autor selbst verantwortlich; sie dienen lediglich Informationszwecken und ich mache mir deren Inhalte nicht zu Eigen!

© Günter Bechly, Böblingen, 2007