Green-Faced Clubtail Dragonfly: Black-and-Yellow Abdomen, Gray Thorax

Summary: North American green-faced clubtail dragonfly habitats get gray thoraxes, yellow-spotted and triangle-marked black abdomens and black claspers and legs.

green-faced clubtail (Gomphus viridifrons) in eastern Canada's Ottawa River Valley: TnK Canoe@tnkcanoe, via Twitter June 17, 2018

North American green-faced clubtail dragonfly habitats accommodate naturalists, not cultivators, in rocky distribution ranges in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Ontario.

Green-faced clubtails bear their common name for green faces and for clubbed male abdomens and the scientific name Gomphus viridifrons ([crossbow arrow] bolt [that is] green-fronted). Common names communicate scientific committee consensus in the Dragonfly Society of the Americas, whose 27th Bulletin of American Odonatology concerns at-risk odonates and larval austral forktails. Descriptions in 1901 by James Stewart Hine (June 13, 1866-Dec. 22, 1930), Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Museum natural history curator in Columbus, determine scientific designations.

Green-faced clubtail life cycles expect clean, moderate- to swift-flowing, rocky rivers and streams with gravel, sand and silt bottoms, rapids, riffles and waterside weedy, woody plants.

May through August function as earliest to latest flight seasons even though May and June furnish wildlife mapping opportunities throughout North America's inland green-faced clubtail niches.

Green-faced clubtails go out from night-time roosts for mates, perches and prey on river- and stream-wettened, shaded and sunny rocks away from rapids, riffles and winds. They hold horizontally onto shady or sunlit bush, shrub, tree or weed leaves and hunt as sallier perchers like broadwings, dancers, nonglider, nonsaddlebag skimmers and spreadwings. Their itineraries include late afternoon patrols despite clouds, shade and winds and institute hovers into the wind over riffles despite being dislodged and having to reposition.

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

Immature green-faced clubtails keep to diminutive sizes and rock-, river- and stream-kind colors even though adults know green eyes and blacks, grays, gray-greens, yellow-greens and yellows.

Incompletely metamorphosing life cycles lead from eggs laid by females on river and stream bank perches to hatched larvae, naiads or nymphs and to molted tenerals. Immature, multimolting, nonflying stages metamorphose into shiny-winged, tender-bodied, weak-flying tenerals that master permanent colors, physical and sexual maturation, mating and manipulating eggs into watery ovipositing sites. 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 green-faced clubtail dragonfly habitats offer north- to southward, season-coldest temperatures from minus 45 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 42.11 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 green-faced clubtails.

Backward-pointing, big, black spines on yellow crests, yellow-green faces, unclubbed abdomens, yellow-marked abdominal sides, egg-filled ovipositors, two claspers qualify as adult brown-, gray- or violet-eyed female hallmarks. Adult males reveal green eyes, dark-crossbarred green faces, chunky, gray thoraxes, black legs, dot-tipped clear wings, pale-spotted black abdomens with pale triangle-patterned segments and three claspers. Adults show off 1.78- to 1.81-inch (45- to 46-millimeter) head-body lengths, 1.29- to 1.38-inch (33- to 35-millimeter) abdomens and 1.06- to 1.10-inch (27- to 28-millimeter) hindwings.

Gray-green thoraxes, pale-spotted abdomens with triangle-patterned segments and black-spined crests tell black-claspered, black-legged, green-eyed, green-faced clubtails from other odonates in North American green-faced clubtail dragonfly habitats.

Dobsonflies (Corydalinae subfamily) number among prey nourishing green-faced clubtails (Gomphus viridifrons); hellgrammite (dobsonfly larval form) in Tennessee stream; Sunday, Sep. 14, 2014, 23:00: DellaRay923, CC BY SA 4.0 International, via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgment

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

Image credits:

green-faced clubtail (Gomphus viridifrons) in eastern Canada's Ottawa River Valley: TnK Canoe@tnkcanoe, via Twitter June 17, 2018, @ https://twitter.com/tnkcanoe/status/1008387286642384896

Dobsonflies (Corydalinae subfamily) number among prey nourishing green-faced clubtails (Gomphus viridifrons); hellgrammite (dobsonfly larval form) in Tennessee stream; Sunday, Sep. 14, 2014, 23:00: DellaRay923, CC BY SA 4.0 International, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hellgrammite_in_TN_stream.JPG

For further information:

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

Bright, Ethan. "Hylogomphus viridifrons (Hine, 1901: 60 as Gomphus) -- Green-faced Clubtail." Aquatic Insects of Michigan > Odonata (Dragon- and Damselflies) of Michigan > Anisoptera Selys, 1854 -- Dragonflies > Gomphidae (Clubtails) > Hylogomphus Needham, Westfall and May 2000 (common name TBD).
Available @ http://www.aquaticinsects.org/sp/Odonata/sp_oom.html

"Gomphus viridifrons." James Cook University-Medusa: The Odonata - Dragonflies and Damselflies > Anisoptera > Gomphidae > Gomphus.
Available via James Cook University-Medusa @ https://medusa.jcu.edu.au/Dragonflies/openset/displaySpecies.php?spid=1272

Hine, James S. "A New Species of Gomphus and Its Near Relatives: Gomphus viridifrons n. sp." The Ohio Naturalist, vol. 4, no. 1 (February 1901): 60-61. Columbus, Ohio: The Biological Club of the Ohio State University, 1901.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/50397509
Available via HathiTrust @ https://hdl.handle.net/2027/iau.31858029813734?urlappend=%3Bseq=82

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

TnK Canoe@tnkcanoe. "It's always exciting to find a different species. Green-faced Clubtail from the Ottawa River Valley #nature #odonata #dragonfly #insect." Twitter. June 17, 2018. Available via Twitter @ https://twitter.com/tnkcanoe/status/1008387286642384896

"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/