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Mai Po Nature Reserve supports a diverse invertebrate community with nearly 400 species recorded from the Mai Po reedbeds alone. This diversity owes a lot to the range of habitat types found within the Reserve.
Among the terrestrial invertebrate groups, the Damselfly and Dragonfly (collectively called Odonata) are perhaps the most studied because they are dependant on fresh/brackish water during their life cycle and are reasonable indicators of water quality.
Within Mai Po, fifty-two different species of Damselfly and Dragonfly have been recorded in and around the Reserve. This is roughly half the Hong Kong total. During the main flight period - mid March to early October ˇV of any given year, around 25-30 species are typically encountered. Recent survey work by WWF shows at least 14 species breed in Mai Po's freshwater ponds.
One of these breeding species is the globally vulnerable Four-spot Midget damselfly Mortonagrion hirosei, which is only known from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan. WWF HK carries out regular baseline monitoring of damselfly and dragonfly to study their abundance, breeding success and the general ˇ§healthˇ¨ of fresh water ponds.
Sixty-one species of butterfly (over 20% of the total number of species recorded in Hong Kong) have been recorded in the Reserve. None of these are dependant on the wetland environment, but are attracted into Mai Po by particular plants such as Lantana Lantana camara, a non-native plant, which provides a good source of nectar when flowering. Others are host plants for caterpillars, for example, the caterpillars of the Chocolate Royal butterfly Remelana jangala consume leaves of the mangrove, Kandelia obovata.
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© Joe S.Y. Lee |
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There are numerous other invertebrate groups at Mai Po; moths (over 250 species including the discovery of 2 new species to science in 1997 - Schrankia bilineata and Thalassodes maipoensis), crabs (over 40 species including Parasesarma maipoensis a species only known from Hong Kong and Macau), shrimps (more than 10 species) and aquatic invertebrates (over 80 species, excluding insects). In general, invertebrates are understudied and much work remains to fully catalogue species and better understand their ecology. |
