With wings half-open to the impossibility of fleeting engagements, this Platycnemidid patrolled the still, damp air of a shady depression by a stony track in Gombak. Collectively known as featherlegs for the enlarged tibia of the males of some species, damselflies in this family ('platys' meaning wide and 'cneme' is leg in Greek) are slight and slender insects usually found on low vegetation by trailside seeps or slow-flowing streams. Their stenotopicity restricts many species to step swamps and quiet pools in uncivilised forests of the sort feared by urban park strollers.
Five species known to occur in Singapore, of which three can be regarded as highly endangered locally. The yellow featherleg (Copera marginipes), a greenish yellow phantom with immature females that often assume a pallid 'ghost form', is a widespread but rare damselfly reported to favour nutrient-rich seepages close to the reservoirs (D.H.Murphy, 1997). The variable C. vittata was first recorded on the island in 1997 and will likely live (or perish) beneath the notice of most proud proponents of a deceptively green city.
Somewhat apt for a nation in love with nodes, the most abundant member of the family in Singapore is Coeliccia octogesima, a dainty flyer with light blue markings on its synthorax shaped uncannily like old-fashioned telephone handsets. Two congenerics, C. didyma and C. albicauda (which is probably the species pictured) are known from single specimens from a neglected corner of the reserves.
Other strongholds, however, have lost their populations of forest damselflies to a national drive to commute in comfort. Murphy records the apparent extinction of a sparkling green Calopterygid when a stand of mature riparian swamp succumbed to siltation from work on a pan-island speedway in the 1970s. The forest did return somewhat, but the damsel never did. Thriving populations of four other genera, including Coeliccia, also died out in that locality when the cartery was enlarged to give vehicles a greater share of the pie. It's a trade off on unequal terms that is likely to go on until every corner is cut and there is no room left for half a chance of hope to save damsels in perpetual distress.
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