About Coenagrion armatum (Charpentier, 1840)
For identification, at first glance this damselfly may look more like a blue-tailed damselfly or a red-eyed damselfly than a typical species from the Coenagrion genus. Both sexes have a distinctive black abdomen, with colored segments at both the base and the tip. Males have very large appendages that set them apart from similar species. In terms of status and distribution, this species occurs across Northern and Eastern Europe, extending eastward through Asia to Siberia and Mongolia. This damselfly was extirpated from all its former sites in the United Kingdom, driven by natural ecological succession that changed open water habitats into dry reedbeds. It was thought to have been extirpated from the Netherlands during the twentieth century, but was rediscovered in the country in 1999.
