Ken Baker, Ph.D.
damselfly restingon a pinpoint in the airchanges direction
I like this haiku by Jacqui Thewless. It brings to mind the thick, humid air hanging over a reed-choked drainage ditch in mid-July. And hovering above, a damselfly searching, always searching, for the inattentive katydid or a banded garden spider to pluck from her web.
Mysterious animals, fearsome to some, dragonflies and damselflies are creatures of myth and wonder. Just their names evoke enchantment and romance: Ebony Jewelweed, Blue-fronted Dancer, Azure Bluet, Shadow Darner, Unicorn Clubtail, Dragonhunter, Arrowhead Spiketail, Widow Skimmer, Ruby Meadowhawk, Racket-tailed Emerald…Last I checked, almost 170 species have been observed in Ohio.
Little wonder many birders who thrill to a glimpse of a scarlet tanager or indigo bunting, are starting to train their field glasses on these smaller, but no less brilliant flashes of vibrant life.
Damselflies are more slender than a dragonfly
Damselflies, as the name might suggest, are generally smaller, more slender, and appear more delicate in flight than their stout-bodied cousins, the dragonflies. At rest, a damselfly folds its wings together at an upward angle above the back, while a dragonfly holds its two pairs of wings out from the body like a fixed-winged aircraft.
Both are predators on other arthropods but they differ in their hunting methods. While the dragonfly swoops in like an F-35 fighter jet to scoop up a flying cicada in a basket made of its six spiny legs, the damselfly typically operates more like an Apache attack helicopter, dropping from above on an unsuspecting firefly or mosquito.
And after crushing the prey’s head with their powerful mandibles, it’s just a matter of settling on some nearby cattail for a pleasant dining experience.
Their aquatic larvae, called nymphs or naiads, are no less murderous. Voracious predators on any organism in their pond or stream smaller than themselves, they employ a unique mechanism for capturing prey. Dragonfly and damselfly naiads both possess a toothed labium (essentially a hinged lower lip), that can shoot forward, stab a prey, and bring it back to the mouth.
Dragonflies, damselflies have short livespans
While some nymphs are known to live up to several years before crawling out of the water to transform into the winged stage, most adult dragonflies only live a few weeks, and damselflies seldom more than a few days, before dying of starvation or being preyed upon themselves.
In any case, the adults’ primary job is to produce the next generation. Males aggressively defend a strip of vegetation along the water’s edge against other males. But when a female enters the area, he attempts to grasp her behind the head with special claspers on his tail.
They may fly together “in tandem” like this for a bit before landing on stem to mate, which entails the female bending her abdomen under herself to pick up a packet of sperm from a pad at the base of the male’s tail. This “wheel” or “heart” mating shape makes for one of the most striking biological images in nature.
After mating, female dragonflies can be seen dipping their tails in the water to deposit their fertilized eggs, in some species while still flying in tandem with the male. Female damselflies typically deposit their eggs into small slits they make on the stems of plants just above or below the water.
Folklore: Messengers between the living and spirit worlds
There’s a rich global folklore centered on these handsome animals. Here’s a small taste: A common theme in Asian and Native American cultures is the belief dragonflies are messengers between the living and spirit worlds. In mid-August, large numbers of dragonflies arriving during the Japanese Buddhist festival of Obon are thought to be carrying the spirits of departed relatives, and people build bonfires to guide the spirits home for a visit.
Because of their remarkable transformation from aquatic nymph to iridescent adult, some North American indigenous cultures view dragonflies as symbols of renewal and the immortality, believing them to be deceased souls dreaming of their past lives.
European cultures typically had a less benign view of the insects which were often associated with the Devil and black magic. In England and Colonial America, the “snake doctor” was viewed as a guardian of snakes who would warn them of danger and even stitch up their wounds.
Staying with the stitching theme, in Sweden and parts of the States, children were told dragonflies would sew closed their eyelids and mouths or sting them (neither of which they can do) if they lied or misbehaved − the source of yet another sobriquet, the Devil’s darning needle.
But why “dragon”-fly? After St. George slew the dragon of Silene, as the story goes, Satan turned his horse into a giant flying insect, which became known as the Devil’s horse or Devil’s fly. In Romanian, the root word “drac” refers to the Devil, and an error in translation to English is thought to have changed Devil’s fly to dragon fly.
Ken Baker is a retired professor of biology and environmental studies. If you have a natural history topic you would like Dr. Baker to consider for an upcoming column, please email your idea tofre-newsdesk@gannett.com.
