Elegant Spreadwing Damselfly Habitats: Shaded Ovipositor, Yellow-Backed Head

Summary: North American elegant spreadwing damselfly habitats from the Great Plains to the Atlantic get dark- to pale-shaded ovipositors and yellow-backed heads.

elegant spreadwing damselfly (Lestes inaequalis) in Patuxent National Wildlife Refuge, Laurel, northern Prince George's County, southern Maryland; Saturday, June 14, 2014: Judy Gallagher (judygva), CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Flickr

North American elegant spreadwing damselfly habitats aggrieve arborists, master gardeners, master naturalists and tree stewards in canopy-crowded watery distribution ranges from Manitoba, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas to Atlantic coastlines.

Elegant spreadwings bear their common name for impressive appearances and sizes and the scientific name Lestes inaequalis (robber [with] unequal [paired inferior and superior abdominal appendages]). Common names conserve the consensus of committees of scientists convened by the Dragonfly Society of the Americas, whose governance business meetings and 15-member executive councils coordinate. Scientific designations discern descriptions in 1862 by Benjamin Dann Walsh (Sept. 21, 1808-Nov. 18, 1869), naturalist from Hackney, England, and first official state entomologist in Illinois.

Elegant spreadwing lifespans expect canopy-covered, permanent, slow-moving lakes, marshes, ponds and streams with abundant sedges and waterlilies and with wooded shorelines within pine forests and woodlands.

April through September function as optimum, southernmost flight seasons even though June through July furnish wildlife mapping opportunities throughout Canada's and the United States' elegant niches.

Males get late starts to their days with flights over open water and perches low on stems or under leaves within emergent vegetation and waterside shrubs. They hunt, not as gleaners of ground prey or hawkers of stalked prey but, like other pond and related stream spreadwings, as salliers of edible passers-by. They include as inviting prey invertebrate inhabitants of herbaceous vegetation in weedy clearings, other damselflies in transit through overlapping distribution ranges and tender-bodied, timid-flying teneral spreadwings.

Ants, biting midges, ducks, falcons, fish, flycatchers, frogs, grebes, lizards, robber flies, spiders, turtles and water beetles and mites jeopardize North American amber-winged spreadwing damselfly habitats.

Immature elegant spreadwing damselfly females and males keep to dull, faded, light, pale colors and low size ranges during the incomplete metamorphoses between egg-hatching and egg-laying.

Incompletely metamorphosing life cycle stages lead elegant spreadwings from egg-hatched, multi-molting larvae, naiads or nymphs into molted, shiny-winged, soft-bodied, weak-flying tenerals and into sexually mature adults. All life cycle stages manage low-profile incomplete metamorphoses such that research musters many uncertainties about mating and ovipositing other than tandem egg-laying on water-lily leaf upper-sides. Pond spreadwing members of the Calopterygidae broad-winged family need aphids, beetles, borers, caddisflies, copepods, crane flies, dobsonflies, gnats, leafhoppers, mosquitoes, rotifers, scuds, water fleas and worms.

North American elegant spreadwing damselfly habitats offer season-coldest temperatures, northward to southward, from minus 45 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 42.77 to minus 6.66 degrees Celsius).

Beech, bellflower, birch, bladderwort, cattail, daisy, grass, greenbrier, heath, laurel, madder, maple, nettle, olive, pepperbush, pine, pondweed, rush, sedge, water-lily and willow families promote elegant spreadwings.

Bronze abdomens and upper thoraxes, dark-bottomed, pale-topped ovipositors, green-topped, yellow-green-bottomed eyes, pale lower legs, red-brown-lined bronze thoracic fronts and yellow lower thoraxes quicken adult female identifications. Adult males reveal age-whitened, bronze to metallic-green abdomens and thoraxes, blue-green-topped, bright blue-highlighted, green-bottomed eyes, dot-tipped wings, red-brown mid-lines, yellow sides and undersides and yellow-backed heads. Adults show off 1.77- to 2.36-inch (45- to 60-millimeter) head-body lengths, 1.38- to 1.85-inch (35- to 47-millimeter) abdomens and 0.98- to 1.22-inch (25- to 31-millimeter) hindwings.

Absence of dark-bottomed, pale-topped ovipositors and of yellow-backed heads tells on other pond and related stream spreadwing presences in overlapping North American elegant spreadwing damselfly habitats.

possible identification of elegant spreadwing damselfly (Lestes inaequalis), photographed by Darren's Bugs @darrensbugs: Invertebrate Studies Institute @InvertebrateStudiesInstitute via Facebook Sept. 7, 2014

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

elegant spreadwing damselfly (Lestes inaequalis) in Patuxent National Wildlife Refuge, Laurel, northern Prince George's County, southern Maryland; June 14, 2014: Judy Gallagher (judygva), CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/52450054@N04/14440132944/

possible identification of elegant spreadwing damselfly (Lestes inaequalis), photographed by Darren's Bugs @darrensbugs: Invertebrate Studies Institute @InvertebrateStudiesInstitute via Facebook Sept. 7, 2014, @ https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=300709073447902

For further information:

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Beaton, Giff. Dragonflies & Damselflies of Georgia and the Southeast. Athens GA; London UK: University of Georgia Press, 2007.

Berger, Cynthia. Dragonflies. Mechanicsburg PA: Stackpole Books: Wild Guide, 2004.

Bright, Ethan. "Lestes inaegualis Walsh, 1862: 385 -- Elegant Spreadwing." Aquatic Insects of Michigan > Odonata (Dragon- and Damselflies) of Michigan > Zygoptera, Selys, 1854 > Lestidae, Calvert 1901 (Spreadwings) > Lestes Leach, 1815 (Pond Spreadwings).
Available @ http://www.aquaticinsects.org/sp/Odonata/sp_oom.html

"Lestes inaequalis." James Cook University-Medusa: The Odonata - Dragonflies and Damselflies > Zygoptera > Lestidae > Lestes.
Available via James Cook University-Medusa @ https://medusa.jcu.edu.au/Dragonflies/openset/displaySpecies.php?spid=4473

Paulson, Dennis. Dragonflies and Damselflies of the East. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, Princeton Field Guides, 2011.

"The 2012 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map." The National Gardening Association > Gardening Tools > Learning Library USDA Hardiness Zone > USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map.
Available @ https://garden.org/nga/zipzone/2012/

Walsh, Benjamin D. "List of the Pseudoneuroptera of Illinois, Contained in the Cabinet of the Writer, With Descriptions of Over Forty New Species, and Notes on Their Structural Affinities: Lestes inaequalis, n.sp." Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia: 385-386. Philadelphia PA: The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 1862.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/1951857
Available via HathiTrust @ https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015035553265?urlappend=%3Bseq=397
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/stream/jstor-4059488/4059488#page/n25/mode/1up