NATURE NOTES ~ Dragonfly Days
Posted by Interactive Desk on Aug 13 2009, 12:11 PM
By Albert Burchsted:
Picture this without laughing if you can. On the evening of Aug. 1, there were between 30 and 40 adults of ages
between 20 and 80 walking, running, and twisting around in a quarter acre clearing in the woods, swinging insect
nets over their heads. Most of the attempts resulted in empty nets.
Similar events involving groups of four to 10 people had occurred during the day along lakesides and in meadows in
several towns across southeastern New Hampshire. These people were not novices. Many have been studying their
prey for three to five decades. Yet, the frequency of capture was less than five percent, and most of the animals
captured were released without injury.
I spent a long weekend catching and identifying odonates, dragonflies, and damselflies, with the Dragonfly Society
of the Americas. We were participating in the Northeast Regional Odonate Survey in Southeastern New Hampshire,
trying to increase the known number of species to 75 for several towns. We only reached that level for one of the
towns, and raised several other towns’ counts.
As there are just under 150 species of odonates known for New Hampshire, 75 represents more than one half of the
state’s known odonates. Connecticut’s inventory of known odonate species is 153. New London county has 119
known species of dragonflies and damselflies—just over 80 percent of Connecticut’s total, making New London the
most completely surveyed county in the state. Yet the known number of dragonflies and damselflies in any town in
New London county falls far short of that
number.
As I have not spent much time studying odonates, I expected my role in the survey to be minimal. Yet, of the 40 or
so species of odonates that my group of four collected, three species that I captured were first records for that town,
as well as for me. By the end of the weekend, my group had captured seven species new to the towns we were
working in and 14 species that were new to me.
Why Do People Hunt Odonates?
There are hundreds of reasons people chase and catch dragonflies.
Many are beautiful—odonates are sometimes called the jewels of the insect world.
We do not yet know how many species there are, and two probable new species in the Northeast are currently being
examined. One of these has widespread distribution, the other is found only along a short stretch of the Hudson
River in the state of New York.
Other reasons why folks examine dragonflies is odonate distribution changes in different weathers and climates—
some require cool weather, others need warmer days.
Also the presence of dragonfly larvae indicates habitat quality—pollution, predators, and filling in wetlands often
eradicate them. As insect hunters, reductions of dragonflies increases the probability of transmitting mosquito-
vectored diseases.
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