Common Baskettail Dragonfly Habitats: Base-Patched Hindwings, Hairy Thorax

Summary: North American common baskettail dragonfly habitats get base-patched hindwings, dot-tipped forewings, hairy, spotted thoraxes and striped abdomens.

common baskettail dragonfly (Epitheca cynosura); U.S. Department of the Interior/Bureau of Land Management's Meadowood Special Recreation Management Area (SRMA), Mason Neck, southernmost Fairfax County, Northern Virginia; Friday, April 14, 2017: Judy Gallagher (Judy Gallagher), CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Flickr

North American common baskettail dragonfly habitats assemble vernal pool-loving naturalists and water garden-loving gardeners into distribution ranges from Nova Scotia through Florida, Texas, Nebraska, Minnesota, Ontario and New Brunswick and everywhere in-between.

Common baskettails bear their common name for abundant populations and egg-carrying abdominal tips and the scientific name Epitheca cynosura (upon a case [with a] dog's tail). Common names correlate with scientific committee consensus in the Dragonfly Society of the Americas, whose 19th Bulletin of American Odonatology concerns great spreadwings and spiny-headed snaketails. Scientific designations draw upon descriptions in 1839 by Thomas Say (June 27, 1787-Oct. 10, 1834), resident of the Say family home, The Cliffs, at Gray's Ferry.

Common baskettail life cycles expect permanent and temporary, slow, still-watered lakes, marshes, ponds, rivers and streams with emergent and submerged vegetation and open or wooded edges.

January through November function as earliest to latest flight seasons even though May or June furnish wildlife mapping opportunities throughout North America's common baskettail habitat niches.

John C. Abbott, in Dragonflies and Damselflies in Texas and the South-Central United States, gives common baskettails hovering patrol and non-hovering feeding, mating and swarming flights. Common baskettails hang obliquely from low-lying, perch-friendly stems and twigs, head erratically and quickly over forest clearings, paths, roads and trails and hover over submerged vegetation. Swarms for winged termites and 12- to 30-foot (3.66- to 9.14-meter) and 3- to 10-yard (2.74- to 9.14-meter) patrols respectively involve all adults and males only.

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

Immature common baskettails keep midmorning and early and late afternoon schedules for feeding swarms with other baskettail species and evenings for patrolling swarms with shadowdragon emeralds.

Incomplete metamorphosis links egg strings laid on submerged vegetation; little adult-like, multi-molting, nonflying larvae, naiads or nymphs living amid aquatic plants and water-bottom debris; tenerals. Immature stages molt into shiny-winged, soft-bodied, weak-flying tenerals 3.28 to 9.84 feet (1 to 3 meters) above waterlines and manage 5-minute matings during 4,265.092-plus-mile (1,300-plus-meter) flights. Aphids, beetles, borers, caddisflies, copepods, crane flies, dobsonflies, gnats, leafhoppers, mosquitoes, rotifers, scuds, water fleas and worms nourish baskettail members of the Corduliidae emerald dragonfly family.

North American common baskettail dragonfly habitats offer season-coldest temperatures, northward to southward, from minus 45 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 42.11 to minus 1.11 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 treetop emeralds.

Abdomens elevated for ovipositing site-searching and tipped with 6.56- to 9.84-foot (2- to 3-meter) by 1-plus-inch (2.54-plus-centimeter) orange-yellow strings and short claspers qualify as female hallmarks. Adult males reveal orange-yellow faces; blackened foreheads; blue, green, red-gray eyes; base-patched, hind- and dot-tipped forewings; dark, ridged legs; hairy, yellow-spotted brown thoraxes; yellow-striped black abdomens. Adults show off 1.42- to 1.73-inch (36- to 44-millimeter) head-body lengths, 0.98- to 1.34-inch (25- to 34-millimeter) abdomens and 1.02- to 1.18-inch (26- to 30-millimeter) hindwings.

Base-patched hindwings and dot-tipped forewings; hairy, yellow-spotted thoraxes; yellow-striped abdomens tell dark-bodied, ridge-legged common baskettail dragonflies from other odonates in North American common baskettail dragonfly habitats.

female common baskettail dragonfly (Epitheca cynosura) lays eggs in Fermilab's Bull Rush Pond, near Batavia, DuPage County, northeastern Illinois; photo by Bridget Scerini/Fermilab Technical Division: Fermilab @Fermilab, via Twitter June 12, 2015

Acknowledgment

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

Image credits:

common baskettail dragonfly (Epitheca cynosura); U.S. Department of the Interior/Bureau of Land Management's Meadowood Special Recreation Management Area (SRMA), Mason Neck, southernmost Fairfax County, Northern Virginia; Friday, April 14, 2017: Judy Gallagher (Judy Gallagher), CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/52450054@N04/33231620883/

female common baskettail dragonfly (Epitheca cynosura) lays eggs in Fermilab's Bull Rush Pond, near Batavia, DuPage County, northeastern Illinois; photo by Bridget Scerini, Fermilab Technical Division: Fermilab @Fermilab, via Twitter June 12, 2015, @ https://twitter.com/Fermilab/status/609465248827883520

For further information:

Abbott, John C. Dragonflies and Damselflies of Texas and the South-Central United States: Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma and New Mexico. Princeton NJ; Oxford UK: Princeton University Press, 2005.

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. "Epitheca (Tetragoneuria) cynosura (Say, 1839: 30 as Libellula) -- Common Baskettail." Aquatic Insects of Michigan > Odonata (Dragon- and Damselflies) of Michigan > Anisoptera Selys, 1854 - Dragonflies > Corduliidae Selys, 1850 (Emeralds) > Epitheca Burmeister, 1839 (Baskettails).
Available @ http://www.aquaticinsects.org/sp/Odonata/sp_oom.html

Fermilab @Fermilab. "A common baskettail dragonfly by Bull Rush Pond lays eggs. #Nature photo by Bridget Scerini." Twitter. June 12, 2015. Available @ https://twitter.com/Fermilab/status/609465248827883520

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: 19. L. cynosura." Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia: vol. VIII, part I: 30-31. Philadelphia PA: Merrihew and Thompson, 1839.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/24622981
Available via HathiTrust @ https://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.32044106432990?urlappend=%3Bseq=40

"Tetragoneuria cynosura." James Cook University-Medusa: The Odonata - Dragonflies and Damselflies > Anisoptera > Corduliidae > Epitheca.
Available via James Cook University-Medusa @ https://medusa.jcu.edu.au/Dragonflies/openset/displaySpecies.php?spid=929

"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. "Epitheca cynosura exuvia." Twitter. April 26, 2017.
Available @ https://twitter.com/Geodialist/status/857157720943849472