Stream Cruiser Dragonfly Habitats: Bulged Head, Long Legs, Solo Stripe

Summary: North American stream cruiser dragonfly habitats have big eyes barely touching, bulging heads, long legs, single-striped thoraxes and spotted abdomens.

U.S. Department of the Interior/Bureau of Land Management's Meadowood Special Recreation Management Area (SRMA), Mason Neck, southernmost Fairfax County, Northern Virginia; Thursday, April 14, 2016: Judy Gallagher (Judy Gallagher), CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Flickr

North American stream cruiser dragonfly habitats appease cultivators with water-accessible fields and naturalists with distribution ranges from Nova Scotia through Alberta and Minnesota, Illinois and Texas, Louisiana and Maine and everywhere in-between.

Stream cruisers bear their common name for patrolling streams and the scientific name Didymops transversa (double eye [and] transverse) for posterior bumps and mid-sidelined thoracic bands. Common names communicate scientific committee consensus in the Dragonfly Society of the Americas, whose fourth Bulletin of American Odonatology checklists Puebla, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic. Descriptions in 1839 by Thomas Say (June 27, 1787-Oct. 10, 1834), Pennsylvania-born son of U.S. Representative Benjamin Say (Aug. 28, 1755-April 23, 1813), define scientific designations.

Stream cruiser dragonfly life cycles expect forested lakes, rivers and streams with brushy, grassy, herbaceous and woody waterside vegetation; nearby fields; sandy bottoms; and slow currents.

January through September function as earliest to latest flight seasons even though April or May furnishes wildlife mapping opportunities throughout stream cruiser coastal and inland niches.

Stream cruisers go to daytime foraging, patrolling, pre-mating perches on stems in grassy, herbaceous, low-lying vegetation or on twigs higher up in bushes, shrubs or trees. They hang horizontally, obliquely or vertically onto brushy, grassy, herbaceous, weedy, woody perches, head back and forth and hover over the same 100-yard (91.44-meter) waterside stretches. They immobilize aquatic and terrestrial, low-flying and low-lying invertebrate prey within forked claws and heavy spines on brown, long, ridged, three-segmented legs and powerful lower lips.

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

Immature stream cruisers know brown eyes and dull, faded, pale, small bodies just as adults keep brilliant green eyes, low size ranges and lusterless body coloration.

Incomplete metamorphosis links green, round eggs laid at high speeds over water surfaces near high, overhanging banks; multi-molting, nonflying larvae, naiads or nymphs; and molted tenerals. Immature stream cruisers metamorphose into shiny-winged, soft-bodied, weak-flying tenerals that manage physical and sexual maturation and mating and ovipositing respectively low down over land and water. Stream cruiser members of the Macromiidae cruiser family need aphids, beetles, borers, caddisflies, copepods, crane flies, dobsonflies, gnats, leafhoppers, mosquitoes, rotifers, scuds, water fleas and worms.

North American stream cruiser dragonfly habitats offer season-coldest temperatures, northward to southward, from minus 45 to 20 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 stream cruisers.

Big brown eyes; brown-spotted wing bases; bulging pale backs of heads; pale-spotted thick brown abdomens; and single-, side-striped white-haired brown thoraxes qualify as adult female hallmarks. Adult males reveal brown-veined clear wings and other female-like colors, spots and stripes even though they retain terminally clubbed abdomens, green-highlighted brown eyes and pale claspers. Adults show off 2.20- to 2.36-inch (56 to 60-millimeter) head-body lengths, 1.34- to 1.69-inch (34- to 43-millimeter) abdomens and 1.34- to 1.89-inch (34- to 48-millimeter) hindwings.

Big eyes briefly touching, bulging heads, long legs, single-striped thoraxes and spotted abdomens tell stream cruisers from other odonates in North American stream cruiser dragonfly habitats.

female stream cruiser dragonfly (Didymops transversa); Accotink Bay Wildlife Refuge, Fort Belvoir, Fairfax County, Northern Virginia; April 20, 2016: Walter Sanford @Geodialist, via Twitter April 23, 2016

Acknowledgment

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

Image credits:

male stream cruiser dragonfly (Didymops transversa); U.S. Department of the Interior/Bureau of Land Management's Meadowood Special Recreation Management Area (SRMA), Mason Neck, southernmost Fairfax County, Northern Virginia; Thursday, April 14, 2016: Judy Gallagher (Judy Gallagher), CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/52450054@N04/26410323186/

female stream cruiser dragonfly (Didymops transversa); Accotink Bay Wildlife Refuge, Fort Belvoir, Fairfax County, Northern Virginia; April 20, 2016: Walter Sanford @Geodialist, via Twitter April 23, 2016, @ https://twitter.com/Geodialist/status/723798860242415616

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. "Didymops transversa (Say, 1839: 19 as Libellula) - Stream Cruiser." Aquatic Insects of Michigan > Odonata (Dragon- and Damselflies) of Michigan > Anisoptera Selys, 1854 -- Dragonflies > Macromiidae, Tillyard, 1917 (River Cruisers) > Didymops Rambur, 1842 (Brown Crusiers).
Available @ http://www.aquaticinsects.org/sp/Odonata/sp_oom.html

"Didymops transversa." James Cook University-Medusa: The Odonata - Dragonflies and Damselflies > Anisoptera > Macromiidae > Didymops.
Available via James Cook University-Medusa @ https://medusa.jcu.edu.au/Dragonflies/openset/displaySpecies.php?spid=556

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

Say, Thomas. "Descriptions of New North American Neuropterous Insects, and Observations on Some Already Described. Read July 12, 1836: 3. L. transversa." Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia: vol. VIII, part I: 19. Philadelphia PA: Merrihew and Thompson, 1839.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/24622970
Available via HathiTrust @ https://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.32044106432990?urlappend=%3Bseq=29

"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/

Walter Sanford ‏@Geodialist. "Stream Cruiser dragonfly (female)." Twitter. April 23, 2016.
Available @ https://twitter.com/Geodialist/status/723798860242415616

Walter Sanford ‏@Geodialist. "Stream Cruiser dragonfly (male)." Twitter. April 14, 2017.
Available @ https://twitter.com/Geodialist/status/852808991579058176