Marsh Dancer

Onychargia atrocyana · Order: Odonata · Family: Platycnemididae

Also called: Black Marsh Dart

No source yet on danger. We have no source yet on whether it bites, stings or damages anything.
Marsh Dancer
Photo: Cheryl Stinchcomb, CC BY

The Marsh Dancer is a medium-sized damselfly with a velvet-black head and thorax, and black-capped brown eyes. In its younger stages it shows narrow citron-yellow stripes on the thorax and a broad oblique black stripe on the sides, while adults have a black abdomen with bluish rings on segments 3-6. It lives and breeds in forest ponds and marshes across many Asian countries, including India, China, Thailand and Indonesia.

Source: Wikipedia

How to recognize it

Sub-adults and tenerals display narrow citron-yellow ante-humeral stripes on the thorax dorsum. The adult abdomen is black and unmarked, but segments 3-6 have narrow bluish basal rings.

Source: Wikipedia

Size

It is a medium-sized damselfly.

Source: Wikipedia

Where it lives

It breeds in ponds and marshes within forested areas.

Source: Wikipedia

Same family (Platycnemididae)

Blue FeatherlegBlue FeatherlegPlatycnemis pennipesYellow featherlegsYellow featherlegsCopera marginipesOrange FeatherlegOrange FeatherlegPlatycnemis acutipennisBlue Bush DartBlue Bush DartCopera vittataCommon ThreadtailCommon ThreadtailElattoneura glaucaRed-striped Black BambootailRed-striped Black BambootailProdasineura verticalis

Sources

  • Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onychargia_atrocyana

Look it up elsewhere: GBIF · iNaturalist · BugGuide · Wikipedia

Text written 2026-10-23 from the sources above and checked sentence by sentence against them. Data fetched 2026-10-22.

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