A fairly widely distributed species, occurring in alkaline lowland ponds with some vegetation present. Adults overwinter and there may be two generations per year.

The map is based on records from NBN Gateway, with yellow dots showing pre 1990 records, reds dots 1990 – 2015 records and red on yellow dots overlapping records. The  recent Scottish records should be treated with caution as there is some doubt about their validity. There is a single recent record for Ireland (County Mayo).

Although many species of Sigara may look similar at first glance, a combination of the following characters will generally be sufficient for identification: the length, the number of pale lines on the pronotum (and sometimes the shape of the pronotum) the pattern of dark and light lines on the forewing, the structure of the male pala and the shape of the metasternal xiphus. S. limitata is one of the smaller species of the genus (5.0 – 6.5 mm), with 7-9 pale lines on the pronotum, 2-3 dark longitudinal lines on the corium, a pattern of paler pegs and a metasternal xiphus as shown below.

Metasternal xiphus                                     Male pala