📜 EwA Week Highlights: A Closer Look at Odonata

[Mike McGlathery]

EwA Highlights August 17, 2024 Hello everyone!  Thanks for reading the August 17th EwA highlights. This week, we’ll take a deeper dive into the dragonflies and damselflies (order Odonata). They’re some of the fiercest invertebrate predators in our skies, and are some of my favorite species to observe. 📸 Odonates are most well-known for their aerial hunting prowess, but their naiads are fearsome underwater predators too. Many of these are ambush predators, waiting on the bottoms of ponds or amongst vegetation for prey to pass by. And I believe the naiads have a physiological feature that’s more magnificent than any of the adults’: their huge jaws, which they hold folded under their thorax until it’s time to strike. Damselfly naiads (like the one Tom photographed here) tend to be skinnier than those of dragonflies, just like the adults.  EwA iNaturalist Record (© Thomas G. Eid · Princeton, MA · October 23, 2021)  Painting with broad strokes, dragonfly adult behavior can be placed on a spectrum between “perchers” and “fliers”. Most dragonflies fit (relatively) cleanly into one category or the other. The blue dasher (Pachydiplax longipennis) is a classic percher, spending much of its time surveying its surroundings atop a dead or broken off stem and leaving the stem only briefly when it has sighted prey or a potential mate. EwA iNaturalist Record (© Daniel Onea · Quincy, MA · August 20, 2022)  Perchers are often territorial, defending their preferred spot against others of the same species, and reluctant to leave it. That’s part of why we see percher species show up so often in our iNat observations. Not only are they often found posing nicely for the camera, but if you happen to scare one up off its perch, it will likely come back to that same spot to defend its territory. Fliers are usually territorial too, but they defend territories in the air as opposed to specific perches. EwA iNaturalist Record (© Kate Estrop · Cambridge, MA · July 11, 2023)  Fliers instead spend much of their life on the wing, chasing down prey or looking for a mate. Dragonflies possess some of the most impressive flying skills in the entire animal kingdom. There’s a reason dragonflies are some of the oldest winged insects, with a morphology that has stayed pretty much the same for 300 millions years. It’s one of the best bodies for flying that evolution has managed to produce. I could throw all kinds of stats at you here, but if you really want to appreciate the abilities of a dragonfly in flight, try to take a picture of one.  EwA iNaturalist Record (© Joe MacIndewar · Stoneham, MA · June 8, 2024)  📅 EwA Upcoming Public Events Ewa Field Events » Check the EwA Summer [ Event details and registration » ] Don’t miss some great opportunities to follow the rhythm of the season in our local habitats and in the local wildlife! Space is limited for all our field events. Wildlife ethics is important to us and we seek to avoid putting the pressure on natural habitats which large gatherings unavoidably do. We are asking our audience to register-and-commit (or cancel when you know you can’t come) to avoid no-shows. EwA Fieldwork (and Resources) It’s a great time to join our monitoring programs. Check EwA’s Volunteer Program Calendar 📅  to know when things happen. And if a session is of interest to you, don’t hesitate to reach out to get the rendezvous location. 📅 EwA Sites Map | 🌱 Site Protocols and Guides · Field Rosters · Field Notes » All here! | ℹ️ More about EwA’s Citizen Science Program » Here ❓ Do you have any questions? Don’t be shy. Just email me or reply to this thread.  That’s all for this week—hope you have a good one! -Mike