Colombian communities revive languages while documenting dragonflies
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Researchers working in Guainía, a remote region of eastern Colombia, partnered with Indigenous communities to identify nearly 120 species of dragonflies and damselflies.
Initially, scientific records only listed about 10 species in the area. The project expanded beyond scientific cataloging when researchers realized that local communities lacked familiar terms for the insects within the standard biological language, and some participants did not speak Spanish. Community leaders then organized workshops inviting people of all ages to share their knowledge.
Participants used their ancestral languages to identify the dragonflies found in local waterways, recovering existing words or creating new ones when needed. The Puinave, Tucano, and Curripaco communities are all actively participating in this linguistic and biological work, simultaneously strengthening their endangered languages. This collaborative effort allows communities to monitor dragonfly populations, which serve as indicators of freshwater ecosystem health.
The region’s water sources face increasing threats from mining, deforestation, waste management issues, and growing tourism, making this monitoring particularly important. The project demonstrates how combining scientific research with traditional ecological knowledge can benefit both biodiversity conservation and cultural preservation.
