David Cabot - Collins New Naturalist Library

A particularly rich site for these relict species is the top of Doughruagh Mountain (526 m), a northern outlier of the Twelve Bens of Connemara, west Galway. Several small, shallow pools pepper the summit. The vegetation is meagre and includes bog pondweed, water lobelia, water-milfoil, Myriophyllum sp., bulbous rush and the sub-aquatic moss Scorpidium scorpioides. These often mist-shrouded and rain-drenched pools are the unlikely spots, because of their barren mountain summit locations, for spawning frogs. The ensuing tadpoles enter into the diet of the rapacious larvae of two very rare Dytiscidae found here: the alpine and smallest of the great diving beetles Dytiscus lapponicus and an arctic-alpine species Agabus arcticus. The nymph of another glacial relict, the water boatman Glaenocorisa propinqua, has also been recorded here 67as well as on the Peakeen Mountain, Co. Kerry and in the Blue Stack Mountains, Co. Donegal. It has also been recorded from Lough Nacartan (30–60 m above sea level), Killarney, Co. Kerry, and in Upper Lough Bray (425–457 m above sea level). 68The only other Irish records of Dytiscus lapponicus are from Co. Donegal, the Partry Mountains, west Mayo and Co. Kerry. As for Agabus arcticus , it has been found in pools in the Wicklow Mountains and from Glenariff and Lough Evish in Co. Antrim. The adults in the population of the glacial relict stonefly Capnia atra living in the Devil’s Punch Bowl (over 700 m above sea level) near the summit of Mangerton Mountain, Co. Kerry, are brachypterous – short winged and non-flying – considered to be a selective advantage as because they cannot fly they are prevented from being blown away to an unsuitable area in such a windswept region. 69Another insect survivor from the Ice Age is a small alpine caddisfly Tinodes dives,

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