Malaysia, Borneo – Odonata of Sarawak

Thirteen days of prospecting in search Odonata of Sarawak, from March 18 to 30, 2025 in this Malaysian state on the island of Borneo, allowed our international team of six members (joined by Rory Dow for three days) to contact around a hundred species of odonates.
For my part, I photographed a little over 90, including about 50 new ones for me, which is an excellent score, but not unexpected given that many are endemic to the island.

We mainly explored around Kuching, a very large city in the northwest of the state, and two days further northeast, on the Maludam Peninsula, to enjoy the swampy peatlands in the forest of Maludam National Park.
The temperature of this equatorial climate varies from approximately 24°C at night to 33°C during the day, all year round. It rains a lot in Sarawak, more than 3500 mm per year in Kuching, and we took full advantage of it during the first five days, which inevitably turned out to be disappointing.
There is therefore a lot of humidity and all sorts of habitats are constituted; temporary pools, pools formed by the overflowing of rivers, drainage ditches along roads or irrigation canals, ponds, streams and rivers in the plains, streams and small torrents in the lower mountains, and finally famous swampy peatlands in the forest.

Identification relies on the knowledge of Phil Benstead, and the expert knowledge of Rory Dow, who lives in the country and is a specialist in this region. He has also published numerous « papers, » reports, and accounts that are essential. It is also necessary to search through old or recent documents to find descriptions, unearth diagrams of anal appendages, venation, or more simply thoracic or abdominal patterns. Finally, a few books are useful for obtaining details and clarifications; they are cited below.
Unnamed species are known, some are in the process of being described, others awaiting naming, and finally, many others remain to be discovered in Sarawak and, more broadly, in Borneo (an island half the size of France), in areas that are difficult to access or still unexplored.
In 2021, at the time of this publication by Rory Dow, the list of Sarawak odonates reached 303 species.

Références
– A Guide to the Dragonflies of Borneo, their identification and biology. A.G. Orr, Natural History Publication (Borneo) – 2003.
– A.G. Orr, 2005. Dragonflies of Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore – Natural History Publication (Bornéo) A.G.
– Tang H. B., L. K. Wand and M. Hämäläinen, 2010. A photographic guide to the dragonflies of Singapore. Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research.
– Robin Ngiam & Marcus Ng – A photographic guide to the Dragonflies and Damselflies of Singapore – John Beaufoy Publishing – 2022