Fawn Darner Dragonfly Habitats: Big Heads, Paired Dots and Stripes

Summary: North American fawn darner dragonfly habitats get big heads, brown or green eyes, brown-spotted wing bases and tips and paired pale dots and stripes.

fawn darner dragonfly (Boyeria vinosa); Gatineau River, Cantley, southwestern Quebec, eastern Canada; Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2014, 17:01: D. Gordon E. Robertson (Dger), CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons

North American fawn darner dragonfly habitats accept cultivators less readily than naturalists in distribution ranges from Nova Scotia through Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Alberta, Prince Edward Island and everywhere in-between.

Fawn darners bear their common name for young deer-like, pale-spotted brown colors and knitting-needle-like shapes and the scientific name Boyeria vinosa (Boyer's wine-colored [discolored preserved specimen]). The scientific name commemorates Étienne Laurent Joseph Hippolyte Boyer de Fonscolombe (July 22, 1772-Feb. 13, 1853), specialist in ants, bees, beetles, insect pests, sawflies and wasps. Scientific designations draw upon descriptions in 1839 by Thomas Say (June 27, 1787-Oct. 10, 1834), expeditioner to Florida, Georgia, Mississippi River headwaters and Missouri River tributaries.

Fawn darner life cycles expect fast-flowing, rocky- or soft-bottomed woodland rivers and streams, slow-moving forest rivulets and streamlets and wind-swept lakes with semiopen or shady edges.

March through December function as earliest to latest flight seasons even though July through August furnish wildlife mapping opportunities in all Canadian and United States niches.

Fawn darners infrequently glean and never glide from low perches that they grasp vertically between dawn and late afternoon in woodlands, on cliffs and under bridges. They hang like loose twigs before hawking low, with fluttering wings and raised abdomens, over shorelines and water through nightfall for hunting competitions with insect-loving bats. Broad wings, clawed, three-segmented legs, dark-adapted eyes and projectable, retractable lower lips impel investigations of downed branches, projecting sticks and root tangles for mates and prey.

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

Dark, stocky, immature fawn darners keep underneath stones in forest stream birthplaces whereas juvenile and mature fawn darners respectively know woodside and waterside perches and roosts.

Incomplete metamorphosis links rod-shaped eggs laid in wet wood at or just below waterlines, multi-molting, nonflying larvae, naiads or nymphs and molted, shiny-winged, soft-bodied, weak-flying tenerals. Recently emerged tenerals mature physically and sexually before mating in daytime, evening and night-time roosts, manipulating eggs into wood and sometimes mistaking human legs for sites. 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 fawn darner dragonfly habitats offer season-coldest temperatures, northward to south-ward, from minus 45 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 42.11 to minus 16.11 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 fawn darners.

Brown, fine-haired abdomens with yellow-dotted sides, brown thoraxes with green-striped shoulders and yellow-white side-spots and brown-tinted wings with brown-spotted bases and tips qualify as adult hallmarks. Females retain brown eyes, pointed, slender claspers longer than segment 10 in eastern populations and shorter in western while thinner males reveal blue-green-topped, pale-brown-bottomed olive-brown eyes. Adults show off 2.36- to 2.79-inch (60- to 71-millimeter) head-body lengths, 1.77- to 2.21-inch (45- to 56-millimeter) abdomens and 1.54- to 1.81-inch (39- to 46-millimeter) hindwings.

Brown or green eyes, brown-dotted wings and paired pale dots and stripes tell big-headed fawn darners from other odonates in North American fawn darner dragonfly habitats.

closeup of claspers, terminal abdominal appendages, of fawn darner dragonfly (Boyeria vinosa); claspers comprise two upper appendages, termed cerci, and a lower, vestigial appendage, termed epiproct: MaLisa Spring @EntoSpring, via Twitter Feb. 2, 2018

Acknowledgment

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

Image credits:

fawn darner dragonfly (Boyeria vinosa); Gatineau River, Cantley, southwestern Quebec, eastern Canada; Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2014, 17:01: D. Gordon E. Robertson (Dger), CC BY SA 3.0 Unported, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fawn_Darner_(Boyeria_vinosa),_Cantley.jpg

closeup of claspers, terminal abdominal appendages, of fawn darner dragonfly (Boyeria vinosa); claspers comprise two upper appendages, termed cerci, and a lower, vestigial appendage, termed epiproct: MaLisa Spring @EntoSpring, via Twitter Feb. 2, 2018, @ https://twitter.com/EntoSpring/status/959487873283252226

For further information:

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

"Boyeria vinosa." James Cook University-Medusa: The Odonata - Dragonflies and Damselflies > Anisoptera > Aeshnidae > Boyeria.
Available via James Cook University-Medusa @ https://medusa.jcu.edu.au/Dragonflies/openset/displaySpecies.php?spid=127

Bright, Ethan. "Boyeria vinosa (Say, 1839: 13 as Aeschna) - Fawn Darner (syn.) Aeschna quadriguttata Burmeister, 1839: 837." 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).
Available @ http://www.aquaticinsects.org/sp/Odonata/sp_oom.html

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Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/8223197
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/stream/handbuchderentom222burm#page/837/mode/1up

MaLisa Spring @EntoSpring. "For comparison, Boyeria vinosa has an indented epiproct (center) that is shorter than the paraprocts. #OhioDragonfly." Twitter. Feb. 2, 2018.
Available @ https://twitter.com/EntoSpring/status/959487873283252226

Mead, Kurt. "Dragonfly Biology (Excerpted From Dragonflies of the North Woods." Minnesota Dragonfly Society.
Available @ http://www.mndragonfly.org/html/biology.html

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: 5. AE. vinosa." Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia: vol. VIII, part I: 13. Philadelphia PA: Merrihew and Thompson, 1839.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/24623002
Available via HathiTrust @ https://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.32044106432990?urlappend=%3Bseq=23

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