Madras Week celebrations: Naturalist Kumaran Sathasivam his experiences with dragonflies – The New Indian Express

Express News Service

CHENNAI: It was April 2016. Even in the shimmering summer, the clouds were pregnant with rain. While for most of us it would have simply meant a welcome relief, for author and naturalist Kumaran Sathasivam, the weather was a harbinger of joyful news. These were the perfect conditions for him to spot a dragonfly. He was at the Guindy National Park then, along with his friends from the Madras Naturalists Society (MNS), crouching behind the bushes, and staying still for he didn’t want to scare away the rare green-striped slender dartlet that he was about to photograph.

In a webinar organised by the MNS as part of the Madras Week celebrations, Kumaran recounted his experiences with dragonflies and damselflies. Kumaran’s fascination for dragonflies — or super insects, as he calls them — began when he picked up his first digital camera in 2003. “The pictures allowed us to observe much more than we could during our quick encounters with them on our walks. We could see the veins on the wings and the appendages on the abdomen of these super insects,” he said.

He went on to observe their behavioural tendencies and soon compiled his findings in the Blackbuck, the monthly journal published by MNS. Kumaran has been credited with adding around 16 species of dragonflies to the list of those spotted in Chennai. He is often accompanied by his wife, Ramila, on his quests. The duo choose an area and observe the various dragonfly species that appear over a period of time.

“By October 2016, we knew that there were a few species of dragonflies that survived all year round, and a few that appeared only for some months. We didn’t know where they went or where they were coming from, but we kept searching,” he said. In November 2017, he began researching extensively on Chennai’s dragonflies.

He published his work in the August 2020 issue of the Blackbuck. The first recorded observation of a dragonfly in Chennai was by HR Wishworth, an English entomologist who travelled to Chennai and observed its biodiversity in the late 1910s. The next most prominent mention was in the works of Francis C Fraser, another English entomologist who settled in Chennai during the 1930s.

He observed the Madras clubtail near the Coomb River (as it was known then). To confirm if some dragonflies migrate or remain in the same region for generations, Kumaran even returned to the Cooum river and spotted the Madras clubtail again. Thus, confirming that some dragonfly species do not migrate too far from their place of birth. “I also found out that the Madras clubtail has been spotted in Pune and West Bengal as well, which means that these insects may have been migrating for generations.

My guess is that the competition for food has caused these insects to disperse,” he shared. To explain the origins and migrations of dragonflies, he compared Chennai city to a railway station. “There are dragonflies like the yellow-tailed ashy skimmer, which are local and can be seen in one place all year long, while other dragonflies like the crimson marsh glider, move on to different locations.

It’s one way to explain how we have found dragonfly species, which are generally seen in the Western Ghats, here in Chennai,” he said. Of these dragonflies that visit, five species are rare — yellowstriped flutterer, crimson marsh glider, long-legged marsh glider, three lined dart and cyclogomphus heterostylus. Developmental evils like habitat loss and pollution have played a major role in the reduction in populations of these species.

During his travels around Tamil Nadu and bordering areas, Kumaran noted that he could find dragonflies in different environments. There were species like the coromandel marsh dart that could be found near still waterbodies, and the black stream glider near running waterbodies like springs and rivers. He also found certain dragonfly species that didn’t dwell near water at all. After all his years of observing these graceful beauties, Kumaran said that there is still much that we don’t know of them, and “the last word has still not been written about Madras’s dragonflies.”