Common Green Darner Dragonfly Habitats: Bull's-Eye Forehead, Green Body

Summary: North American common green darner dragonfly habitats from Canada through Mexico and Caribbean America get green bodies with bull's-eye-marked foreheads.

male common green darner dragonfly (Anax junius); Bles Park, Ashburn, Loudoun County, Northern Virginia; Sunday, July 29, 2012, 11:41: Judy Gallagher, CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Wikimedia Commons

North American common green darner dragonfly habitats attract aquatic plant-loving cultivators and naturalists to distribution ranges throughout Canada, excluding Nunavut (Our Land), the Northwest Territories and the Yukon and the United States.

Common green darners bear common names for abundance, greenness and knitting needle-like abdomens and the scientific name Anax junius (ruler Lucius Junius Brutus, 545 B.C.-509 B.C.). Common names clinch scientific committee consensus in the Dragonfly Society of the Americas, whose 14th Bulletin of American Odonatology considers Patuxent Wildlife Research Center area odonates. Descriptions in 1770 by Dru Drury (Feb. 4, 1724-Dec. 15, 1803), first English practitioner of Carl Linnaeus's (May 23, 1707-Jan. 10, 1778) methodology, define scientific designations.

Common green darners expect brackish or fresh, fishless, marshy, permanent or temporary, still-watered bays, lakes, ponds, pools, streams and swamps near fields, meadows and upland clearings.

January through December function as earliest to latest flight seasons even though June through September furnish wildlife mapping opportunities throughout North America's common green darner niches.

Common green darners go from dawn to dusk on forages of grassy fields and meadows and upland clearings and patrols 3 feet (0.92 meters) above water. They hang down from daytime perches higher up in bushes, shrubs and trees and lower down in grasses and weeds and hover when heading into breezes. They ingest butterflies, mosaic darners, mosquitoes and wasps that they immobilize within clawed, three-segmented legs and projectable, retractable lower lips during mixed- and same-species feeding swarms.

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

Immature common green darners keep red-violet abdomens as camouflage amid underwater thickets even though males and some females know blue and other females green as adults.

Incomplete metamorphosis leads from rod-shaped eggs laid in alive or dead, floating or upright branches, leaves and stems to larvae, naiads or nymphs and to tenerals. Multi-molting, nonflying immature stages molt into shiny-winged, tender-bodied, weak-flying tenerals that mature to mate away from water and manage one- to two-minute tandem oviposits per stop. Aphids, beetles, borers, caddisflies, copepods, crane flies, dobsonflies, gnats, leafhoppers, mosquitoes, rotifers, scuds, water fleas and worms nourish green darner members of the Aeshnidae dragonfly family.

North American common green darner dragonfly habitats offer season-coldest temperatures, northward to southward, from minus 45 to 65 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 42.11 to 18.33 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  darners.

Amber- or brown-tinted, clear, pale-edged wings; green thoraxes; brown, thin legs; black-topped, blue abdomens or brown-topped, green abdomens with gray-green sides qualify as adult female hallmarks. Adult males reveal green yellow-rimmed eyes; blue semi-circled black bull's-eye-patterned foreheads; green thoraxes; brown, thin legs; yellow-edged, yellow-tinted wings; black upper-striped blue abdomens; three brown claspers. Adults show off 2.68- to 3.31-inch (68- to 84-millimeter) head-body lengths, 1.81- to 2.36-inch (46- to 60-millimeter) abdomens and 1.77- to 2.28-inch (45- to 58-millimeter) hindwings.

Pale-rimmed, seamed-together eyes, bull's-eye-patterned foreheads, flickering wingbeats, tandem ovipositing, unmarked thoraxes tell common green darners from other odonates in North American common green darner dragonfly habitats.

female common green darner dragonfly (Anax junius); Sunday, April 18, 2010, 10:39: Chuck Evans Mcevan, CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, 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:

male common green darner dragonfly (Anax junius); Bles Park, Ashburn, Loudoun County, Northern Virginia; Sunday, July 29, 2012, 11:41: Judy Gallagher, CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Common_Green_Darner_(male)_-_Anax_junius,_Bles_Park,_Ashburn,_Virginia_-_7680751954.jpg; Judy Gallagher (Judy Gallagher), CC BY 2.0 Generic, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/52450054@N04/7680751954/

female common green darner dragonfly (Anax junius); Sunday, April 18, 2010, 10:39: Chuck Evans Mcevan, CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dragonfly_Common_Green_Darner_Female_Anax_junius_2010-04-18.jpg

For further information:

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"Anax junius." James Cook University-Medusa: The Odonata - Dragonflies and Damselflies > Anisoptera > Aeshnidae > Anax.
Available via James Cook University-Medusa @ https://medusa.jcu.edu.au/Dragonflies/openset/displaySpecies.php?spid=79

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. "Anax junius (Drury, 1773: 112 as Libellula) - Common Green Darner (syn.) Anax spiniferus Rambur, 1842: 188." Aquatic Insects of Michigan > Odonata (Dragon- and Damselflies) of Michigan > Anisoptera Selys, 1854 -- Dragonflies > Aeshnidae Rambur, 1842: 181 (Darners) > Anax Leach, 1815: 137 (Green Darners).
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Drury, D. (Dru). "Index to the First Volume: XLVII. 5. Junia -- Libell." Illustrations of Natural History. Wherein Are Exhibited Upwards of Two Hundred Forty Figures of Exotic Insects, According to Their Different Genera; Very Few of Which Have Hitherto Been Figured by Any Author, Being Engraved and Coloured From Nature, With the Greatest Accuracy, and Under the Author's Own Inspection, on Fifty Copper-Plate: Index (page 2). London, England, B. White, London, 1770.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/40638218

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

Photography Is Art ‏@photography7art. "Great egret & common green Darner dragonfly by Birdergirl." Twitter. Oct. 7, 2017.
Available @ https://twitter.com/photography7art/status/916779532966821895

Rambur, P. (Jules Pierre). 1842. "4. Anax spiniferus, mihi." Histoire Naturelle des Insectes. Névroptères: 186-187. Paris, France: Librairie Encyclopédique de Roret, 1842.
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