How do dragonflies eat? Uncover dragonflies life cycle and fantasies behind these fascinating bugs, and uncover methods to entice dragonflies to eat mosquitoes.
Dragonflies seize our consideration and creativeness, their gossamer wings rattling and flashing throughout the photo voltaic as they patrol the water’s edge or hover above grassy fields. They’ve been surrounded by fantasy and superstition for as long as our eyes have adopted their flight. Nonetheless the very fact of what they’re going to do is rather more great than what we’re in a position to dream up, and whenever you’ve found about them, you’ll want them to make your yard their lair.
Fantastical Flyers
Similar to their legendary namesake, dragonflies encourage equal parts terror and shock, the worry totally unjustified – besides you’re a flying insect, in any case – and the shock well-deserved.
These creatures have been accused of stinging horses to lack of life and nursing serpents once more to life. Naughty children napping outside would fear waking to hunt out their eyes sewn shut by the “devil’s darning needle”; likewise, gossips, liars, and prospects of coarse language would supposedly hazard having their mouths sewn shut. Even fishermen have a beef with these bugs, accusing them of driving the fish away from the hooks of anglers they deemed unworthy. Nonetheless, dragonflies supposedly draw fish to the traces of the good-at-heart.
In Japan, dragonflies are talked about to perform steeds for the spirits of the honored ancestors returning to go to their descendants by means of the Obon pageant each August. Elsewhere, they’re thought-about to be non secular messengers or a sign of tremendous fortune. Swarms of dragonflies are believed to level approaching rain or good fishing. What’s a fisherman to do?
Even their title is wrapped up in superstition and fantasy. “Dragon” refers to not the massive fire-breathing reptiles of fantasy novels and role-playing video video games, nonetheless to the dragon, Satan himself. In response to Northern European lore, the Devil makes use of dragonflies as his non-public steeds, so the dragon flies.
Specific groups and species of dragonflies have many vibrant widespread names evoking their supposed expertise: snake doctor, snake charmer, mule stinger, horse-sting, cow killer, ear cutter, darner. Completely different names are fanciful along with evocative: mosquitohawks, meadowhawks, toilet hunters, pondhawks, sanddragons. My non-public favorite? The Stygian shadowdragon.
How Do Dragonflies Eat?
Dragonflies are an historic group of bugs, sharing the order Odonata (which means “toothed”) with the additional diminutive damselflies. Every groups are predatory, feeding on small creatures inside their attain as youthful aquatic nymphs (often generally known as “naiads”), and feeding on small flying bugs as adults.
The naiads will spend as a lot as 5 years throughout the water, feeding on completely different bugs, tadpoles, and small fish. They’ve an unimaginable (some would say nightmarish) adaptation for catching their subsequent meal. A dragonfly naiad’s lower jaw has a retractable double hinge, allowing it to fold once more beneath its chin. When a aim will get too close to the carefully camouflaged naiad, the naiad can shoot that extendable jaw forward in a blur, snagging the prey and dragging it once more to its mouth throughout the blink of an eye fixed fastened.
Dragonflies Life Cycle
As quickly because the naiads have grown, they’ll crawl above the water’s flooring onto a stem or completely different development, the place they’ll shed their pores and pores and skin for the last word time and purchase wings and an grownup sort. Grownup dragonflies will not ever stroll as soon as extra; from this stage on, their legs are strictly for perching and snagging prey. For the next a variety of weeks to months, they’ll grow to be masters of the air. Whereas some species migrate, most spend their fast time within the summertime photo voltaic sooner than leaving their offspring to spend winter underwater as eggs or naiads.
Crucial dragonfly in North America is the aptly named massive darner, with a hand-spanning 5-inch wingspan and a measurement to match. The smallest dragonfly on the continent is the diminutive elfin skimmer, reaching barely 3/4 inch in measurement.
About 7,000 Odonates exist worldwide, on every continent in addition to Antarctica, and three,000 of them dragonflies. North America hosts better than 450 dragonfly species and practically as many damselflies.
Damselfly vs Dragonfly
How do you inform the excellence between dragons and damsels? Usually, damselflies are smaller and daintier, as their title implies. The place dragonfly hind wings are larger than their forewings and are often outstretched at rest, damselfly wings are all of the similar measurement and are sometimes folded collectively above or behind the once more at rest. A damselfly’s head may also be utterly completely different; the place a dragonfly head is nearly all eye and mouth, with the eyes touching throughout the heart, a damselfly’s eyes are smaller and wideset and separated by a broad “forehead.” Crucial distinction, nonetheless, is that dragonflies are extremely efficient aerial acrobats, whereas damselflies ought to make do with a weaker, fluttery flight.
Previous that, they share the similar main physique format of a head, a muscular thorax, and a protracted, slim abdomen, which, for the file, doesn’t embrace a stinger. The thorax sports activities actions 4 wings and 6 legs. Their legs are utterly designed for grabbing on to prey and perches, not for taking a stroll. That means these dragons do practically all of the issues on the wing: wanting, consuming, combating, mating, and, often, laying eggs. Whereas some species will spend time perching on vantage components to take a look at for meals, mates, or rivals, others spend virtually every waking second aloft.
Not rather a lot escapes a dragonfly’s uncover. Its large eyes current a near-360-degree topic of view. Its solely blind spot is the world straight behind it. Certain, it’s virtually unimaginable to sneak up on a dragonfly.
Dragonflies pair this unimaginable visible discipline with an equally spectacular set of flight skills. They will hover and fly vertically, aspect to aspect, and backward, and they also might even flip somersaults at velocity. Dragonflies have been reliably clocked at 35 mph.
What Do Dragonflies Eat?
With this combination of superior imaginative and prescient and aeronautics, dragonflies are ideally suited to snagging their meals on the wing. No flying insect is safe from a hungry dragonfly. A single dragonfly is claimed to devour anyplace from 30 to better than 100 mosquitoes in a day, incomes it the nickname “mosquitohawk.” One Harvard Faculty study titled “Seize Success and Effectivity of Dragonflies Pursuing Fully completely different Types of Prey” found that dragonflies are so environment friendly as aerial hunters that check out matters caught as a lot as 95 % of the prey launched into their enclosures.
Merely as dragonflies eat, they’re moreover eaten. Fish, amphibians, and completely different aquatic predators will prey on naiads, merely as naiads prey on smaller creatures. Grownup dragonflies moreover uncover themselves feeding fish, frogs, reptiles, birds, and bats. They provide an very important hyperlink throughout the meals web between small flying bugs and larger predators.
The fitting method to Attraction to Dragonflies to Eat Mosquitoes
By now, you’re possibly pondering you may want to ask dragonflies to your subsequent backyard event to deal with the mosquitoes. And you might! All it’s essential to do is present them with a variety of amenities.
The best method to ask dragonflies (and damselflies) to your yard is to place in a water perform, equal to a pond yard, or to make the most of an current stream or stock pond. Lay out the pond yard with shallow areas and deeper water, at least 2 or 3 toes deep. Plant your pond with submerged vegetation to create habitat for the naiads. Eelgrass, pondweeds, anacharis, and fanwort are all good candidates. Embody emergent vegetation, equal to water lilies, water lotus, arrowhead, water iris, and cattails, for perches and places for rising naiads to cling to as they shed their skins and get their wings.
Ponder stocking your pond with small fish, equal to minnows or, in hotter climates, mosquitofish, to help steer clear of rising your particular person mosquito crop. The naiads will help devour mosquito larvae. Your pond might even rapidly harbor frogs and toads, which is ready to help administration mosquito larvae – and feed dragonfly naiads. Do skip the larger fish, as they acquired’t assume twice about snacking in your future dragons. Within the occasion you’re nonetheless apprehensive about homegrown mosquitoes, ponder together with mosquito dunks (Bacillus thuringiensis israelii, or Bti) to the pond water; these will administration mosquitoes with out affecting completely different aquatic bugs. Add some flat rocks or bare, sandy banks for the dragonflies to bask throughout the warmth photo voltaic; they need that photograph voltaic vitality to get going, significantly on chilly mornings.
Within the occasion you may’t add a pond, plant pampas grasses and shrubs for perches and pollinator vegetation to entice small flying bugs that acquired’t disturb your yard soirées. Pollinator favorites embrace black-eyed Susans and purple coneflowers, Joe Pye weed, swamp milkweed, and meadow sage; skip the similar-looking nonetheless invasive purple loosestrife. It is also potential to set bamboo stakes at strategic spots to supply surveillance components for hungry dragons.
Stay away from using pesticides or completely different pesticides wherever potential. Most will injury predator and prey equally, and most pest species breed and get higher faster than predator species can. Certain, which means pesticides can allow rather more pests to maneuver into your yard!
Dedicate a nook of your yard to the dragons of the sector. Give them a safe, clear dwelling and a vantage stage to survey their space. Not solely will you get to take pleasure in their aerial acrobatics in a mosquito-free zone, nonetheless you’ll even have additional pollinators, pest-eating frogs and toads, and completely different pure entertainers calling your yard their dwelling.
Andrew Weidman lives and writes in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, the place he grew up. He spent many a summer season day afield collectively together with his canine and his butterfly web, stalking dragonflies and completely different bugs for his ever-growing assortment. Recently, he’s traded his web for a digicam.