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which_chickOdes is odonates, basically dragonflies and damselflies. They're a group of four-winged carnivorous insects that live in and around fresh water. Odes have been around in one form or another from, like, the cretaceous or some shit so they've been on the planet for at least 66 million years. As a group, they occupy a wide range of aquatic habitats, from tiny forested seeps to broad rivers, quiet ponds to thrashing whitewater, roadside ditches to brackish seaside marshes. If there is persistent fresh(ish) water, there is likely an ode about.
Odonates require water for their life cycle. As nymphs, they live underwater or possibly (for a very small number of poorly-understood species) in VERY MOIST SOPPING WET substrates that are only technically not underwater.
Most odonates are nymphs for between a few months and a few years... but the most common life cycle is for the eggs that are laid one summer to be nymphs through the remainder of the summer, fall, and winter and then to emerge as adults ready to repeat the cycle early the following summer.
Nymphs do not resemble adult odonates any more than caterpillars resemble butterflies and moths. Here's a sample odonate nymph.
When odes change to their adult form (this is called "eclosing"), they crawl up out of the water onto a supporting structure, be it vegetation or mud, and basically explode out of the center-back of their nymph shape like something out of Alien. I don't have a good picture of the explode-out-of-the-back picture, but here is a not-so-good-picture:
Most species do this in the hours before dawn, so that their wings can expand and harden up before the birds get there to eat them. Sometimes you can see odes along the lake shore, in the grass and weeds, eclosing early in the mornings in the tail end of May and early June. Eclosing is dangerous and sometimes it does not go well -- the dragonfly may have failed to emerge fully or it emerges with damaged or crumpled wings. (picture)
Eclosing failures are sad, but birds and fish need to eat too, so... it's not like the broken ones are wasted.
If eclosing goes well, the newly emerged ode flies off (weak and fluttery first flight, during which they are super-easy prey for birds) on shiny new cellophane wings, leaving the shed nymph skin behind.
The shed skin is called an exuvia and some folks collect them too. (picture)
They're fairly fragile, but can be handled a little if you're careful. You can find exuvia from common pond species pretty easily in the lake shore vegetation during the end of May and the first week of June where I live. Most exuvia can be identified to genus, but doing them to species frequently requires intact (not exuvia) nymphs, a decent microscope, and the $200 Tennessen book about nymphs. I kind of feel like the Tennessen book exceeds the level of enthusiasm for ordinary folks, so we'll leave it at that for exuvia and nymph ID.
Newly eclosed dragonflies frequently display subadult coloring. (cfc, immature and mature) The final form adult colors, particularly for males, come online in three days to a week and the shiny cellophane wings also go away at that time.
Adult dragonflies and damselflies eat other flying insects like flies, mosquitoes, and gnats. Youtube has some video of how dragonflies catch insects to eat them and it's pretty impressive to watch. Here's a video about how they work. (Note that in the experimental video, they are feeding the odes fruit flies which are kind of lame-ass fliers. Odes in real life catch better fliers than this and so their lab-measured success rate of like 95% is maybe a bit optimistic. But even against real world bugs instead of sissy lab-grown fruit flies, odes do pretty darned well and even a noob can figure this out by sitting on a dock and watching them hunt.) Odes are alarmingly good at flight. Each of their four wings is controlled independently and they have way better flight musculature than most other flying insects. Here's a good, not-overly-science-y video about that.
Dragonflies use their adult time to eat other insects and to mate and lay eggs. As adults, odes last anywhere from a month to the remainder of the summer. They die from predation (fish and birds, mostly) or from suffering mechanical damage to their wings, which slows them down so that they can't catch food and/or are easily caught themselves. As summer winds down you can frequently see odes with tattered wings. (picture) Odes cannot regrow or repair their wings, so once they're messed up badly enough that the ode can't fly, it's game over.
Odonates cannot bite or sting a human. They don't have stings and their mouths are not made to bite people or suck blood. They are entirely harmless. Even very big, robust odes cannot bite a human hard enough to break the skin, though some will try to do so if you hold them in hand. Don't worry, the best they can do is an ineffectual pinch.
There you go! Now you know more about odes than any reasonable person would want to know.
Odonates require water for their life cycle. As nymphs, they live underwater or possibly (for a very small number of poorly-understood species) in VERY MOIST SOPPING WET substrates that are only technically not underwater.
Most odonates are nymphs for between a few months and a few years... but the most common life cycle is for the eggs that are laid one summer to be nymphs through the remainder of the summer, fall, and winter and then to emerge as adults ready to repeat the cycle early the following summer.
Nymphs do not resemble adult odonates any more than caterpillars resemble butterflies and moths. Here's a sample odonate nymph.
When odes change to their adult form (this is called "eclosing"), they crawl up out of the water onto a supporting structure, be it vegetation or mud, and basically explode out of the center-back of their nymph shape like something out of Alien. I don't have a good picture of the explode-out-of-the-back picture, but here is a not-so-good-picture:
Most species do this in the hours before dawn, so that their wings can expand and harden up before the birds get there to eat them. Sometimes you can see odes along the lake shore, in the grass and weeds, eclosing early in the mornings in the tail end of May and early June. Eclosing is dangerous and sometimes it does not go well -- the dragonfly may have failed to emerge fully or it emerges with damaged or crumpled wings. (picture)
Eclosing failures are sad, but birds and fish need to eat too, so... it's not like the broken ones are wasted.
If eclosing goes well, the newly emerged ode flies off (weak and fluttery first flight, during which they are super-easy prey for birds) on shiny new cellophane wings, leaving the shed nymph skin behind.
The shed skin is called an exuvia and some folks collect them too. (picture)
They're fairly fragile, but can be handled a little if you're careful. You can find exuvia from common pond species pretty easily in the lake shore vegetation during the end of May and the first week of June where I live. Most exuvia can be identified to genus, but doing them to species frequently requires intact (not exuvia) nymphs, a decent microscope, and the $200 Tennessen book about nymphs. I kind of feel like the Tennessen book exceeds the level of enthusiasm for ordinary folks, so we'll leave it at that for exuvia and nymph ID.
Newly eclosed dragonflies frequently display subadult coloring. (cfc, immature and mature) The final form adult colors, particularly for males, come online in three days to a week and the shiny cellophane wings also go away at that time.
Adult dragonflies and damselflies eat other flying insects like flies, mosquitoes, and gnats. Youtube has some video of how dragonflies catch insects to eat them and it's pretty impressive to watch. Here's a video about how they work. (Note that in the experimental video, they are feeding the odes fruit flies which are kind of lame-ass fliers. Odes in real life catch better fliers than this and so their lab-measured success rate of like 95% is maybe a bit optimistic. But even against real world bugs instead of sissy lab-grown fruit flies, odes do pretty darned well and even a noob can figure this out by sitting on a dock and watching them hunt.) Odes are alarmingly good at flight. Each of their four wings is controlled independently and they have way better flight musculature than most other flying insects. Here's a good, not-overly-science-y video about that.
Dragonflies use their adult time to eat other insects and to mate and lay eggs. As adults, odes last anywhere from a month to the remainder of the summer. They die from predation (fish and birds, mostly) or from suffering mechanical damage to their wings, which slows them down so that they can't catch food and/or are easily caught themselves. As summer winds down you can frequently see odes with tattered wings. (picture) Odes cannot regrow or repair their wings, so once they're messed up badly enough that the ode can't fly, it's game over.
Odonates cannot bite or sting a human. They don't have stings and their mouths are not made to bite people or suck blood. They are entirely harmless. Even very big, robust odes cannot bite a human hard enough to break the skin, though some will try to do so if you hold them in hand. Don't worry, the best they can do is an ineffectual pinch.
There you go! Now you know more about odes than any reasonable person would want to know.
