Lancet Clubtail Dragonfly Habitats: Pale-Striped Roller-Coaster Flight

Summary: North American lancet clubtail dragonfly habitats get green-and-yellow-marked dark bodies with spearhead-patterned abdomens and roller-coasterlike flight.

lancet clubtail dragonfly (Gomphus exilis); Conway Robinson State Forest (CRSF), Prince William County, Northern Virginia; Sunday, May 8, 2011: Judy Gallagher, CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Wikimedia Commons

North American lancet clubtail dragonfly habitats advance bog-, marsh-, sand-loving cultivation and naturalism in wet woodland distribution ranges from Nova Scotia through Florida, Louisiana, Minnesota, Alberta and New Brunswick and everywhere in-between.

Lancet clubtails bear their common name for blood-drawing blade-like male claspers and clubbed abdomens and the scientific name Gomphus exilis ([crossbow arrow] bolt [that is] slender). Common names coordinate with scientific consensus in the Dragonfly Society of the Americas, whose 24th Bulletin of American Odonatology concerns little blue, plateau and red-faced dragonlets. Descriptions by Michel Edmond de Selys Longchamps (May 25, 1813-Dec. 11, 1900), son-in-law of Jean Baptiste d'Omalius d'Halloy (Feb. 17, 1783-Jan. 15, 1875), date from 1854.

Lancet clubtail life cycles expect open ponds, quiet marshes, sandy-bottomed lakes, slow-flowing streams and still bogs with ground or low-lying vegetation and rocky or sandy shorelines.

April through September function as earliest to latest flight seasons even though May furnishes wildlife mapping opportunities throughout North America's coastal and inland lancet clubtail niches.

Lancet clubtails go out from night-time roosts on food-searching and perch-seeking flights and mate-seizing patrols near, not over, breeding habitats even though they get lily-pad perches. They hold horizontally onto bare soil, ground cover, low-lying vegetation and sandy roads and hunt as sallier perchers like broadwings, dancers, non-glider, non-saddlebag skimmers and spreadwings. Their itineraries involve immobility between investigative patrols and opportunistic ingestion of fly-by invertebrates and initiation of roller-coaster up-and-down serial uuuus at 10-foot (3.05-meter) heights when imperiled.

Ants, assassin flies, biting midges, ducks, falcons, fish, flycatchers, frogs, grebes, lizards, spiders, turtles and water beetles and mites jeopardize North American lancet clubtail dragonfly habitats.

Immature lancet clubtails keep to diminutive sizes and dull boggy, marshy, rocky, sandy- wet woodland-kind colors even though adults know black-browns, blues, grays, greens and yellows.

Incomplete metamorphosis links round eggs loosened by females tapping egg-filled abdomens into every 2-plus feet (0.61-plus meter) of water, multimolting, nonflying larval stages and molted tenerals. Immature, little adult-like larvae, naiads or nymphs molt in waterside sediments into shiny-winged, soft-bodied, weak-flying tenerals that manage physical and sexual maturation in nearby open woodlands. Aphids, beetles, borers, caddisflies, copepods, crane flies, dobsonflies, gnats, leafhoppers, mosquitoes, rotifers, scuds, water fleas and worms nourish common clubtail members of the Gomphidae dragonfly family.

North American unicorn lancet dragonfly habitats offer season-coldest temperatures, north- to southward, from minus 45 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 42.11 to minus 9.44 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 lancet clubtails.

Dark gray to gray-green eyes, egg-filled ovipositors, egg-thickened abdomens with unclubbed tips more darkened than yellowed and green-thighed pale yellow-brown legs qualify as adult female hallmarks. Adult males reveal blue-gray eyes, brown-and-yellow-striped thoraxes, brown-thighed, pale-shinned legs, dot-tipped clear wings and yellow-sided, yellow-striped black-brown abdomens with clubbed yellowed tips and lancet-like yellow-brown claspers. Adults show off 1.97- to 2.28-inch (39- to 48-millimeter) head-body lengths, 1.10- to 1.42-inch (37- to 41-millimeter) abdomens and 0.91- to 1.06-inch (23- to 27-millimeter) hindwings.

Blue-gray-green eyes, brown-green-yellow legs, clear wings, lancet-like claspers, roller-coaster flight, spearhead-patterned clubbed abdomens tell lancet clubtails from other odonates in North American lancet clubtail dragonfly habitats.

face-head and thorax of lancet clubtail dragonfly (Gomphus exilis); photo by Jonathan White: FotoPhysis @Fotophysis, via Twitter March 4, 2016

Acknowledgment

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

Image credits:

lancet clubtail dragonfly (Gomphus exilis); Conway Robinson State Forest (CRSF), Prince William County, Northern Virginia; Sunday, May 8, 2011: Judy Gallagher, CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lancet_Clubtail_-_Gomphus_exilis,_Conway_Robinson_State_Forest_-_5701122862.jpg

face-head and thorax of lancet clubtail dragonfly (Gomphus exilis); photo by Jonathan White: FotoPhysis @Fotophysis, via Twitter March 4, 2016, @ https://twitter.com/Fotophysis/status/705719007786115073

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