Dragonflies In Droves

[dogg57]

Dragonflies. They’re seemingly everywhere this season.
Patch readers over the past week have said they’ve seen squadrons of them at the beach, bevies of them in their backyards and everywhere in between this summer.
So what gives?
Well, no one really seems to know for certain.
“Dragonfly tracking is really just in its infancy,’’ said Pat Sutton, a naturalist and dragonfly expert in Cape May County.
Some species of the dragonfly — or its cousin, the damselfly — are migratory, while others are not. Some are heartier species, others more sensitive to change, so without knowing exactly which are being seen, it’s difficult to give a concrete answer, naturalists say.
This is the time of year for many species of dragonfly to hatch and take flight. The mild winter that the state experienced could translate into an abundance of the insects that survived the winter, according to Dorothy Smullen, a naturalist at the NJ Audubon Society.

http://tomsriver.patch.com/articles/dragonflies-in-droves-migration-might-be-the-cause-397d3658

 

[manumuskin]

Funny you shoulkd bring this up.I just had this book come in that i ordered and was just outside reading it.

Field Guide to Dragonflies and Damselflies of New Jersey

$31.95

We are pleased to announce our new 285-page field guide: Field Guide to Dragonflies and Damselflies of New Jersey by Allen E. Barlow, David M. Golden, and Jim Bangma. The guide, was two long years in the making.
Features:

• Detailed characteristics of 182 species
• 334 beautiful full-color photographs
• When and where you can find each species
• How to recognize them by their behavior
• Which species are endangered, threatened, or historic
• Learn how to photograph these beautiful creatures

 

[dogg57]

http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/...cle_77d1bb41-b1c3-531a-a5a2-70972c3d3113.html
Here you go Al

 

[manumuskin]

Yes he is one of three authors.So far I am not as happy with the photographs as with the text.The photos are quite pretty but not much help for a neophyte as myself in identifying species.They should have got an artist to make illustrations with the helpful field marks pointed out by arrows as in Petersons field guides.As beautiful as pictures are it is impossible to pose an animal to get all of it's field marks in one shot.I am sure once I become more familiar with Dragon/Damsel fly anatomical terms then I will be able to differentiate species using the written descriptions.The photos look very much alike to me.Perhaps this is my ignorance more so then bad shots of the subjects. I need a net now to catch them and hopefully learn how to release them undamaged.I have no interest in collecting but learning to identify and how they interact with everything else.I'm more of an ecologist then a zoologist.We have a few accomplished botanists on site,I don't know of any entomologists on here but any questions are answered quite speedily and accurately on bugguide.net.I may have to resort to them again with this new found interest.I also have a caterpillar guide coming in and just took a real cool photo of an unknown caterpillar in weymouth park.I may get an ID from bugnet now.I'll post the photo here when I downsize it.

 

[manumuskin]

this is the caterpillar I found in weymouth city park

 

[manumuskin]

http://bugguide.net/node/view/678062#1198533

American dagger moth

 

[Pine Baron]

So what gives?
Well, no one really seems to know for certain.

While visiting my brother last weekend, in Tuckerton, I noticed an unusual amount of dragonflies. In conversation (no source), he explained to me that the dragonflies were released to help control the large population of mosquitoes this year. How much truth there is to this... I don't know, but it makes sense as the dragonfly feeds on small insects.

John-

 

[dogg57]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/05/060511081713.htm

ScienceDaily (May 12, 2006) — Scientists have discovered that migrating dragonflies and songbirds exhibit many of the same behaviors, suggesting the rules that govern such long-distance travel may be simpler and more ancient than was once thought.
The research, published in the May 11 Biology Letters, is based on data generated by tracking 14 green darner dragonflies with radio transmitters weighing only 300 milligrams -- about a third as much as a paper clip. Green darners are among the 25 to 50 species of dragonflies thought to be migratory among about 5200 species worldwide.
The team of researchers that made the discovery, led by Princeton University's Martin Wikelski, tracked the insects for up to 10 days from both aircraft and handheld devices on the ground. They found that the dragonflies' flight patterns showed many similarities to those of birds that migrate over the same regions of coastal New Jersey.