First records of Leucorrhinia caudalis (Odonata, Libelullidae) in Slovakia

The dragonfly Leucorrhinia caudalis (Charpentier, 1840) had not been recorded in Slovakia before 2003. In 2003, we found two sites of occurrence of the species in S Slovakia. L. caudalis is very rare in its area of dis-tribution in Europe and it shows decreasing population trends in the last decades (STERNBERG et al., 2000). In 2000, 74 species of dragonflies were known from Slovakia (DAVID, 2000). However, previously two subspeci c taxons were included into the checklist of Slovak dragonfly species (DAVID, 1999) and thus actually only 72 species were known in 2000. Since then, Cordulegaster heros Theischinger, 1979 has been recorded in Slovakia for the rst time (BLA'KOVI ¨ et al., 2003) and comprising our record of L. caudalis, the number of dragonfly species recorded in Slovakia has increased to 74. We suppose that the occurrence of L. caudalis in Slovakia is not new and it only remained hidden till now. The odonatofauna of the two investigated sites has not been studied in detail before and other similar sites (Baka, GabŁíkovo) were destroyed during the last decades