Ocellated Darner Dragonfly Habitats: Big Eyes, Brown Wingtips, Spots

Summary: North American ocellated darner dragonfly habitats get big eyes, brown-based and tipped wings and yellow-spotted sides on gray-brown bodies and legs.

Color comparisons of four males, two ocellated darner dragonflies (Boyeria grafiana) and two fawn darner dragonflies (Boyeria vinosa), including notations of ocellated darner's "clear green" face versus fawn darner's green face "obscured with brownish," were made by American botanist and entomologist Edward Bruce (E.B.) Williamson (July 10, 1877-Feb. 23, 1933) in his description of the ocellated darner dragonfly on page 2 in "Two new North American Dragonflies (Odonata)," published in Entomological News and Proceedings of the Entomological Section of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, vol. XVII, no. 1 (January 1907): Monday, Aug. 11, 2014, 4:06 p.m. EDT (Eastern Daylight Time) image of Ocellated Darner (Boyeria grafiana), Haliburton County, Central Ontario, Canada: Reuven Martin, Public Domain (CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication), via Wikimedia Commons

North American ocellated darner dragonfly habitats accommodate naturalists in cultivator-unfriendly distribution ranges from Nova Scotia through Georgia, Tennessee through Pennsylvania, New York through Minnesota, Ontario and Prince Edward Island and everywhere in-between.

Ocellated darners bear their common name for eye-like, spotted thoracic sides and knitting needle-like abdomens and the scientific name Boyeria grafiana (Boyer's [and] Graf's [darner dragonfly]). Scientific names commemorate entomologist Étienne Laurent Joseph Hippolyte Boyer de Fonscolombe (July 22, 1722-Feb. 13, 1853) from Aix-en-Provence, France, and naturalist J.L. Graf from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Descriptions in 1907 by Edward Bruce Williamson (July 10, 1877-Feb. 28, 1933), University of Michigan Museum of Zoology Research Associate in Ann Arbor, determine scientific designations.

Ocellated darner dragonfly life cycles expect cold, fast-flowing, rocky streams in woodlands; cold, rocky, swift-flowing rivers in forested uplands; cool, deep, rocky lakes in open woodlands.

June through October function as earliest to latest flight seasons even though August through September furnish wildlife mapping opportunities throughout coastal and inland ocellated darner niches.

Ocellated darner dragonflies go from night-time roosts in dense woodland undergrowth to day-time resting places in forest shade from morning to late afternoon during warmer weather. They hunt, like emeralds, gliders and saddlebags, as hawkers from morning until after nightfall during cooler weather and from late afternoon into night on warmer days. Big eyes, clawed, three-segmented legs and projectable, retractable lower lips investigate mates and prey on brushy, debris-strewn rocky shores slower than darners other than fawn darners.

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

Immature ocellated darners keep to dull-colored, small-sized bodies, brown eyes just as adult females and males know blue and green eyes on brown, green, yellow bodies.

Incomplete metamorphosis lets egg-hatched, multi-molting, nonflying larvae naiads or nymphs look like land-dwelling, little, lusterless adults and links immature stages with molted, shiny-winged, soft-bodied, weak-flying tenerals. Recently emerged tenerals manage permanent colors and mature physically and sexually before mating and manipulating eggs from egg-thickened abdomens, through short ovipositors, into sites for egg-depositing. Aphids, beetles, borers, caddisflies, copepods, crane flies, dobsonflies, gnats, leafhoppers, mosquitoes, rotifers, scuds, water fleas and worms nourish spotted darner members of the Aeshnidae darner family.

North American ocellated darner dragonfly habitats offer season-coldest temperatures, northward to south-ward, from minus 45 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 42.11 to minus 15 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 ocellated darners.

Big, blue eyes, claspers shorter than the 10th segment, ovipositors and thick abdomens qualify as adult hallmarks of gray-brown-bodied, legged and winged, green- and yellow-marked females. Adult males reveal brown abdomens with yellow-spotted rows, brown thoraxes with brown-based, brown-tipped wings, double-, yellow-spotted sides and green-striped shoulders and green- and tan-washed brown eyes. Adults show off 2.48- to 2.56-inch (63- to 65-millimeter) head-body lengths, 1.81- to 2.01-inch (46- to 51-millimeter) abdomens and 1.58- to 1.69-inch (40- to 43-millimeter) hindwings.

Big eyes, brown-based, brown-tipped wings, double-, yellow-spotted sides and gray-brown bodies and legs tell ocellated darners from other odonates in North American ocellated darner dragonfly habitats.

American botanist and entomologist E.B. (Edward Bruce) Williamson's scientific contributions including describing the ocellated darner dragonfly (Boyeria grafiana) and creating varieties of irises, especially bearded, at Longfield Iris Farm, the still family-run nursery that he founded in Bluffton, Indiana; Williamson based his description of the ocellated darner dragonfly upon two male specimens collected at Ohio Pyle, Fayette County, southwestern Pennsylvania, by J.L. Graf, staff member at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Natural History; Williamson honored Graf with the ocellated darner's species name, grafiana (Carsten Ahrens and G.H. and A.F. Beatty, "A Survey of the Odonata of Western Pennsylvania," Proceedings of the Pennsylvania Academy of Science, vol. 43 [1969], page 109; JSTOR @ https://www.jstor.org/stable/44112727); "A view of Ohiopyle Falls, in Pennsylvania," 1787 etching, published in The Columbian Magazine, for February 1787 (opposite page 253); Library of Congress Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Washington DC: No known restrictions on publication, via Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC)

Acknowledgment

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

Image credits:

Color comparisons of four males, two ocellated darner dragonflies (Boyeria grafiana) and two fawn darner dragonflies (Boyeria vinosa), including notations of ocellated darner's "clear green" face versus fawn darner's green face "obscured with brownish," were made by American botanist and entomologist Edward Bruce (E.B.) Williamson (July 10, 1877-Feb. 23, 1933) in his description of the ocellated darner dragonfly on page 2 in "Two new North American Dragonflies (Odonata)," published in Entomological News and Proceedings of the Entomological Section of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, vol. XVII, no. 1 (January 1907): Monday, Aug. 11, 2014, 4:06 p.m. EDT (Eastern Daylight Time) image of Ocellated Darner (Boyeria grafiana), Haliburton County, Central Ontario, Canada: Reuven Martin, Public Domain (CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication), via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fawn_Darner_(Boyeria_vinosa),_Cantley.jpg; Reuven Martin (reuvenm), No Rights Reserved (Public Domain; No Copyright; CC0 1.0 Universal), via iNaturalist @ https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/9058272

American botanist and entomologist E.B. (Edward Bruce) Williamson's scientific contributions including describing the ocellated darner dragonfly (Boyeria grafiana) and creating varieties of irises, especially bearded, at Longfield Iris Farm, the still family-run nursery that he founded in Bluffton, Indiana; Williamson based his description of the ocellated darner dragonfly upon two male specimens collected at Ohio Pyle, Fayette County, southwestern Pennsylvania, by J.L. Graf, staff member at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Natural History; Williamson honored Graf with the ocellated darner's species name, grafiana (Carsten Ahrens and G.H. and A.F. Beatty, "A Survey of the Odonata of Western Pennsylvania," Proceedings of the Pennsylvania Academy of Science, vol. 43 [1969], page 109; JSTOR @ https://www.jstor.org/stable/44112727); "A view of Ohiopyle Falls, in Pennsylvania," 1787 etching, published in The Columbian Magazine, for February 1787 (opposite page 253); Library of Congress Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Washington DC: No known restrictions on publication, via Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC) @ https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2004671551/; Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_view_of_Ohiopyle_Falls,_in_Pennsylvania_LCCN2004671551.jpg; via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/details/columbianmagazin17861787phil/page/n295/mode/1up

For further information:

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alotofdragonflies @lotodragonflies. "Boyeria grafiana f. Aeshnidae (Ocellated Darner) Range: Ontario and Nova Scotia south to Georgia." Twitter. Aug. 14, 2018.
Available @ https://twitter.com/lotodragonflies/status/1029530876554575872

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Bright, Ethan. "Boyeria grafiana Williamson, 1907: 1 - Ocellated Darner." Aquatic Insects of Michigan > Odonata (Dragon- and Damselflies) of Michigan > Anisoptera Selys, 1854 -- Dragonflies > Aeshnidae Rambur, 1842: 181 (Darners) > Boyeria McLachlan, 1896: 424 (Spotted Darners).
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Williamson, E. B. (Edward Bruce). "Two New North American Dragonflies (Odonata): Boyeria grafiana n. sp." Entomological News and Proceedings of the Entomological Section of the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, vol. XVIII, no. 1 (January 1907): 1-5. Philadelphia PA: Entomological Rooms of The Academy of Natural Sciences, 1907.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/2612385