About Uropetala carovei (White, 1843)
Uropetala carovei (White, 1843) is the largest dragonfly in New Zealand. Its yellow and black body reaches a maximum length of 95 millimetres (3.7 in), and its wingspan can measure up to 130 millimetres (5.1 in). Females of this species are slightly larger than males. Both adult females and males have dark brown bodies, with pale spots on the abdomen and thorax. Males have distinctive petal-shaped appendages at the tip of the abdomen. Uropetala carovei can be told apart from the closely related Uropetala chiltoni, which lives in the mountains of New Zealand's South Island, by two physical features: it has an all-black labrum, while Uropetala chiltoni has a large pale blotch on this structure, and it has brown to yellowish femur leg segments, which are black in Uropetala chiltoni. This species is distributed across all of New Zealand, and is most common in the western areas of both main islands, particularly along the West Coast. It inhabits damp areas within native forest.
