22-6-2022 ALFARBI, VALENCIA - NORTHERN BANDED GROUNDLING (FEMALE) (Brachythemis impartita)

https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/361998-Brachythemis-impartita

19-6-2022 RIO JUCAR, VALENCIA - 19-6-2022 RIO JUCAR, VALENCIA - NORTHERN BANDED GROUNDLING (FEMALE) (Brachythemis impartita)

Brachythemis impartita, the Northern banded groundling, is a species of dragonfly, a skimmer from the family Libellulidae from central and northern Africa, its range extending into southern Europe and the Middle East. It was previously considered to be conspecific with B. leucosticta.

Brachythemis impartita has a pale cream pterostigma in both sexes and their eyes appear to be striped. The female has a buffy abdomen and thorax, males are darker and mature males can be dark blue to black on the abdomen and thorax. Males have bands on the outer wings from the node to just short of the pterostigma, this is paler in teneral individuals but darkens as the dragonfly matures. Where they overlap with B. leucosticta the males can be distinguished by the colour of the veins and the genital lobe, as well as by the ventral structure of segment 8. The females cannot yet be told apart. The length of this dragonfly is from 25 to 34 millimetres (0.98 to 1.34 in) and the span of the hindwings is 20 to 26 millimetres (0.79 to 1.02 in).

Brachythemis impartita is found from central Africa as far south as the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Tanzania north through Africa and to the Mediterranean Sea. Its range also extends into the Middle East where it has been recorded from the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Cyprus and southern Anatolia. It has colonised southern Europe and was first recorded there in Portugal in 1957 but it is now also found in Spain, Sardinia, Corsica, Sicily and by 2015 in mainland Italy.