Lafcadio Hearn wrote in his 1901 book "A Japanese Miscellany" that Japanese poets had created dragonfly "haiku" "almost as numerous as are the dragonflies themselves in the early autumn." The poet Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) wrote "haiku" such as "Crimson pepper pod / add two pairs of wings, and look / darting dragonfly", relating the autumn season to the dragonfly. Hori Bakusui (1718–1783) similarly wrote "Dyed he is with the / Colour of autumnal days, / O red dragonfly." The poet Lord Tennyson, described a dragonfly splitting its old skin and emerging shining metallic blue like "sapphire mail" in his 1842 poem "The Two Voices", with the lines "An inner impulse rent the veil / Of his old husk: from head to tail / Came out clear plates of sapphire mail." The novelist H.
In poetry and literature
Dragonfly
Dragonfly | In poetry and literature
Lafcadio Hearn wrote in his 1901 book "A Japanese Miscellany" that Japanese poets had created dragonfly "haiku" "almost as numerous as are the dragonflies themselves in the early autumn." Lafcadio Hearn wrote in "A Japanese Miscellany" that Japanese poets had created dragonfly "haiku" "almost as numerous as are the dragonflies themselves in the early autumn." The poet Lord Tennyson, described a dragonfly splitting its old skin and emerging shining metallic blue like "sapphire mail" in his 1842 poem "The Two Voices". : Lafcadio Hearn wrote in his 1901 book "A Japanese Miscellany" that Japanese poets had created dragonfly "haiku" "almost as numerous as are the dragonflies themselves in the early autumn, the  poet Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) wrote "haiku" such as "Crimson pepper pod / add two pairs of wings, and look / darting dragonfly", relating the autumn season to the dragonfly.
what are the life stages of a dragonfly
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Dragonflies are hemimetabolous insects; they do not have a pupal stage and undergo an incomplete metamorphosis with a series of nymphal stages from which the adult emerges.
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what are they ?
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It is an insect belonging to the order Odonata, infraorder Anisoptera.
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any conservation efforts to protect it ?
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In 1997, the International Union for Conservation of Nature set up a status survey and conservation action plan for dragonflies.
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talk about their coloration ?
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It is often a combination of yellow, red, brown, and black pigments, with structural colours.
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what are its behavior patterns ?
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Many dragonflies, particularly males, are territorial. Some defend a territory against others of their own species, some against other species of dragonfly and a few against insects in unrelated groups.
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what about its sex ratios ?
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The sex ratio of male to female dragonflies varies both temporally and spatially.
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what are their flight speeds ?
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It can travel at 100 body-lengths per second in forward flight, and three lengths per second backwards.
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what are their cultural references ?
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Many Native American tribes consider dragonflies to be medicine animals that had special powers.
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how are they described in poetry and literature ?
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For some Native American tribes, dragonflies represent swiftness and activity; for the Navajo, they symbolize pure water. They are a common motif in Zuni pottery; stylized as a double-barred cross, they appear in Hopi rock art and on Pueblo necklaces. Images of dragonflies are common in Art Nouveau, especially in jewellery designs.
Insects in art | Dragonflies
In the traditional Navajo religion, Big Fly is an important spirit being. Lafcadio Hearn's essay "Butterflies" analyses the treatment of the butterfly in Japanese literature, both prose and poetry. He notes that these often allude to Chinese tales, such as of the young woman that the butterflies took to be a flower. Among the brief 17-syllable Japanese Haiku poems about butterflies, of which he translates 22, one by the Haiku master Matsuo Bashō is said to suggest happiness in springtime: "Wake up! Wake up!—I will make thee my comrade, thou sleeping butterfly." Another compares the butterfly's shape to a Japanese silk upper-dress, the "haori", "being taken off".
Insects in literature | The spirit world
Hori Bakusui (1718–1783) similarly wrote "Dyed he is with the / Colour of autumnal days, / O red dragonfly." The poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson described a dragonfly splitting its old skin and emerging shining metallic blue like "sapphire mail" in his 1842 poem "The Two Voices", with the lines "An inner impulse rent the veil / Of his old husk: from head to tail / Came out clear plates of sapphire mail."
Insects in literature | Harmony with nature
The poet W. B. Yeats wrote "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" (1888) with the honey bee couplet "Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee, / And live alone in the bee loud glade", while he was living in Bedford Park, London. Lafcadio Hearn wrote in his 1901 book "A Japanese Miscellany" that Japanese poets had created dragonfly "haiku" "almost as numerous as are the dragonflies themselves in the early autumn." The poet Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) wrote "haiku" such as "Crimson pepper pod / add two pairs of wings, and look / darting dragonfly", relating the autumn season to the dragonfly.
Insects in literature | Harmony with nature
A blue-glazed faience dragonfly amulet was found by Flinders Petrie at Lahun, from the Late Middle Kingdom of ancient Egypt. Many Native American tribes consider dragonflies to be medicine animals that had special powers. For example, the southwester tribes, including the Pueblo, Hopi, and Zuni, associated dragonflies with transformation. They referred to dragonflies as "snake doctors" because they believed dragonflies followed snakes into the ground and healed them if they were injured. For the Navajo, dragonflies symbolize pure water. Often stylized in a double-barred cross design, dragonflies are a common motif in Zuni pottery, as well as Hopi rock art and Pueblo necklaces.
Dragonfly | In culture
In later times, this custom became seen as a mark of archaism. For some Native American tribes, dragonflies represent swiftness and activity; for the Navajo, they symbolize pure water. They are a common motif in Zuni pottery; stylized as a double-barred cross, they appear in Hopi rock art and on Pueblo necklaces. Among the classical names of Japan are "Akitsukuni" (秋津国), "Akitsushima" (秋津島), "Toyo-akitsushima" (豊秋津島). "Akitu" or "akidu" are archaic or dialectal Japanese words for dragonfly, so one interpretation of "Akitsushima" is "Dragonfly Island". This is attributed to a legend in which Japan's mythical founder, Emperor Jinmu, was bitten by a mosquito, which was then eaten by a dragonfly.
Insects in mythology | Symbols, amulets and omens
Lafcadio Hearn wrote in his 1901 book "A Japanese Miscellany" that Japanese poets had created dragonfly "haiku" "almost as numerous as are the dragonflies themselves in the early autumn." The poet Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) wrote "haiku" such as "Crimson pepper pod / add two pairs of wings, and look / darting dragonfly", relating the autumn season to the dragonfly. Hori Bakusui (1718–1783) similarly wrote "Dyed he is with the / Colour of autumnal days, / O red dragonfly." The poet Lord Tennyson, described a dragonfly splitting its old skin and emerging shining metallic blue like "sapphire mail" in his 1842 poem "The Two Voices", with the lines "An inner impulse rent the veil / Of his old husk: from head to tail / Came out clear plates of sapphire mail." The novelist H.
Dragonfly | In poetry and literature
E. Bates described the rapid, agile flight of dragonflies in his 1937 nonfiction book "Down the River":
Dragonfly | In poetry and literature
The physician and naturalist Thomas Muffet wrote that the horse-fly "carries before him a very hard, stiff, and well-compacted sting, with which he strikes through the Oxe his hide; he is in fashion like a great Fly, and forces the beasts for fear of him only to stand up to the belly in water, or else to betake themselves to wood sides, cool shades, and places where the wind blowes through." The "Blue Tail Fly" in the eponymous song was probably the mourning horsefly ("Tabanus atratus"), a tabanid with a blue-black abdomen common to the southeastern United States. Mosquitoes have been part of oral lore, and even of told jokes, and from folklore pronouncing the origin of the mosquito, and depicting its relation to a "blood-sucking monster" contemporary work has been written and illustrated.
Insects in literature | Torment
As a seasonal symbol in Japan, the dragonflies are associated with season of autumn. In Japan, they are symbols of rebirth, courage, strength, and happiness. They are also depicted frequently in Japanese art and literature, especially "haiku" poetry. Japanese children catch large dragonflies as a game, using a hair with a small pebble tied to each end, which they throw into the air. The dragonfly mistakes the pebbles for prey, gets tangled in the hair, and is dragged to the ground by the weight.
Dragonfly | In culture
Locusts have represented greed, and more literally plague and destruction, while the fly has been used to indicate death and decay, and the grasshopper has indicated improvidence. The horsefly has been used from classical times to portray torment, appearing in a play by Aeschylus and again in Shakespeare's "King Lear" and "Antony and Cleopatra"; the mosquito has a similar reputation.
Insects in literature | Introduction
The females cannot yet be told apart. The length of this dragonfly is from and the span of the hindwings is .
Brachythemis impartita | Description
The literature of the Five Mountains highly prized a sense of humor and sympathy with life’s ordinariness. A Five Mountains poet might write about anything, in contrast to the proscribed themes of the aristocratic court poets. Kokan Shiren (d. 1346) for example would write about a mosquito. Snouts sharp as drill bits! Buzz like thunder as they circle the room. They sneak through the folds of my robe, But they could bloody the back of an ox made of iron! The image in the final line of "Mosquitoes" reminds the reader of one of the custom in Zen establishments of slapping on the head with a stick those practitioners of meditation who have momentarily dozed off.
Literature of the Five Mountains | Style
As a seasonal symbol in Japan, the dragonfly is associated with autumn, and more generally dragonflies are symbols of courage, strength, and happiness, and they often appear in Japanese art and literature, especially "haiku". In Europe, dragonflies have often been seen as sinister. Some English vernacular names, such as "horse-stinger", "devil's darning needle", and "ear cutter", link them with evil or injury. Swedish folklore holds that the devil uses dragonflies to weigh people's souls. The Norwegian name for dragonflies is "Øyenstikker" ("eye-poker"), and in Portugal, they are sometimes called "tira-olhos" ("eyes-snatcher"). They are often associated with snakes, as in the Welsh name "gwas-y-neidr", "adder's servant".
Insects in mythology | Symbols, amulets and omens
Eventually, he became so tiny and shriveled that he turned into the first cicada. In an ancient Sumerian poem, a fly helps the goddess Inanna when her husband Dumuzid is being chased by "galla" demons. Flies also appear on Old Babylonian seals as symbols of Nergal, the god of death and fly-shaped lapis lazuli beads were often worn by many different cultures in ancient Mesopotamia, along with other kinds of fly-jewellery. The Akkadian "Epic of Gilgamesh" contains allusions to dragonflies, signifying the impossibility of immortality. Amongst the Arrernte Aborigines of Australia, honey ants and witchety grubs served as personal clan totems.
Human interactions with insects | In mythology and folklore
Insects have appeared in literature from classical times to the present day, an aspect of their role in culture more generally. Insects represent both positive qualities like cooperation and hard work, and negative ones like greed. Among the positive qualities, ants and bees represent industry and cooperation from the Book of Proverbs and Aesop's fables to tales by Beatrix Potter. Insects including the dragonfly have symbolised harmony with nature, while the butterfly has represented happiness in springtime in Japanese Haiku, as well as the soul of a person who has died. Insects have equally been used for their strangeness and alien qualities, with giant wasps and intelligent ants threatening human society in science fiction stories.
Insects in literature | Introduction
A wide range of both running and standing waters, except those that are shaded. Adults may be found some distance from water in habitats ranging from desert to open woodland; absent from dense forest.
Scarlet dragonfly | Habitat
In contrast, a courtier might write about the cicada and celebrate seasonal associations connected to them. To write about the mosquito would violate the courtier’s strict sense of literary decorum. In a poem entitled "Sailing in the Moonlight", Kokan focuses on the incongruous humor of life. We monks boat in moonlight, circle through the reeds. The boatman shouts the tide recedes; we must return. The village folk mistake us for a fishing boat And scramble to the beach to buy our catch. Five Mountains literature was not entirely concerned with the rustic cloistered world. Often the principal historical events of the day found their way into the works of the monks.
Literature of the Five Mountains | Style
Houseflies appear in literature from Ancient Greek myth and Aesop's "The Impertinent Insect" onwards. Authors sometimes choose the housefly to speak of the brevity of life, as in William Blake's 1794 poem "The Fly", which deals with mortality subject to uncontrollable circumstances.
Housefly | Introduction
In most large species of dragonflies, the wings of females are shorter and broader than those of males. The legs are rarely used for walking, but are used to catch and hold prey, for perching, and for climbing on plants. Each has two short basal joints, two long joints, and a three-jointed foot, armed with a pair of claws. The long leg joints bear rows of spines, and in males, one row of spines on each front leg is modified to form an "eyebrush", for cleaning the surface of the compound eye.
Dragonfly | General description
However, further studies have proven that this interpretation is incorrect with regard to the katydid. There is a poem about an insect "zhongsi" in the Book of Poetry. This insect has been used metaphorically as an auspicious symbol for having many children and grandchildren in Chinese culture. Based on the interpretations of this poem and entomological analyses, this "zhongsi" is very likely a migratory locust. The locust on the Jadeite Cabbage is too small to be positively identified as a migratory locust. However, this "katydid" is definitely a Chinese bush cricket ("Gampsocleis gratiosa") which is not the "zhongsi" of the Book of Poetry.
Jadeite Cabbage | Description
It is a medium sized dragonfly with yellowish white face and blue eyes. Its thorax is yellowish green with some brown stripes. Its wings are transparent, including the base. Its abdomen is pruinosed with azure blue up to the last segments. In old adults, thorax will also get pruinosed, obscuring whole the marks. Females and young males are yellowish green. They breed in marshes and swampy areas in the plains.
Orthetrum luzonicum | Description and habitat
It is a small dragonfly with yellow face and bluish green eyes. Its thorax and abdomen are yellow with broad black marks. Its wings are transparent, with fore-wings faintly and hind-wings broadly tinted with yellow in base. Females are similar to males. It breeds in vegetated ponds and wells. Female stabs eggs on dry twigs hanging over water. The eggs hatch out in rains and the larvae fall directly into the water below.
Tetrathemis platyptera | Description and habitat
"The Impertinent Insect" is a group of five fables, sometimes ascribed to Aesop, concerning an insect, in one version a fly, which puffs itself up to seem important. In the Biblical fourth plague of Egypt, flies represent death and decay, while the Philistine god Beelzebub's name may mean "lord of the flies". In Greek mythology, Myiagros was a god who chased away flies during the sacrifices to Zeus and Athena; Zeus sent a fly to bite Pegasus, causing Bellerophon to fall back to Earth when he attempted to ride the winged steed to Mount Olympus. In the traditional Navajo religion, Big Fly is an important spirit being.
Housefly | In literature
A dragonfly is an insect belonging to the order Odonata, infraorder Anisoptera (from Greek ἄνισος "anisos", "unequal" and πτερόν "pteron", "wing", because the hindwing is broader than the forewing). Adult dragonflies are characterized by large, multifaceted eyes, two pairs of strong, transparent wings, sometimes with coloured patches, and an elongated body. Dragonflies can be mistaken for the related group, damselflies (Zygoptera), which are similar in structure, though usually lighter in build; however, the wings of most dragonflies are held flat and away from the body, while damselflies hold the wings folded at rest, along or above the abdomen. Dragonflies are agile fliers, while damselflies have a weaker, fluttery flight.
Dragonfly | Introduction
The nymph extends its hinged labium (a toothed mouthpart similar to a lower mandible, which is sometimes termed as a "mask" as it is normally folded and held before the face) that can extend forward and retract rapidly to capture prey such as mosquito larvae, tadpoles, and small fish. They breathe through gills in their rectum, and can rapidly propel themselves by suddenly expelling water through the anus. Some naiads, such as the later stages of "Antipodophlebia asthenes", hunt on land. The larval stage of dragonflies lasts up to five years in large species, and between two months and three years in smaller species.
Dragonfly | Life cycle
William Blake's 1794 poem "The Fly", part of his collection "Songs of Experience", deals with the insect's mortality, subject to uncontrollable circumstances, just like humans. Emily Dickinson's 1855 poem "I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died" speaks of flies in the context of death. In William Golding's 1954 novel "Lord of the Flies", the fly is, however, a symbol of the children involved. Ogden Nash's humorous two-line 1942 poem "God in His wisdom made the fly/And then forgot to tell us why." indicates the debate about the value of biodiversity, given that even those considered by humans as pests have their place in the world's ecosystems.
Housefly | In literature
It is a medium-sized dragonfly with brown capped eyes, greenish brown thorax and bluish abdomen. Female lacks the powder blue pruinescence. It prefers medium to slow-flowing streams in the dry zones and hot plains. Adults are common around open rocky and sandy beds of the streams.
Orthetrum taeniolatum | Description and habitat
Odonata (dragonflies and damselflies) are insects with an incomplete metamorphosis (hemimetabolous). The aquatic larva or nymph hatches from an egg, and develops through eight to seventeen instars before leaving the water and emerging as the winged adult or imago.
External morphology of Odonata | Introduction
The nymphs moult repeatedly, at the last moult climbing out of the water to undergo metamorphosis. The skin splits down the back, they emerge and inflate their wings and abdomen to gain their adult form. Their presence on a body of water indicates that it is relatively unpolluted, but their dependence on freshwater makes them vulnerable to damage to their wetland habitats. Some species of damselfly have elaborate courtship behaviours. Many species are sexually dimorphic, the males often being more brightly coloured than the females. Like dragonflies, they reproduce using indirect insemination and delayed fertilisation. A mating pair form a shape known as a "heart" or "wheel", the male clasping the female at the back of the head, the female curling her abdomen down to pick up sperm from secondary genitalia at the base of the male's abdomen.
Damselfly | Introduction
"Dragonfly" (Pecan Grove Press, 1994) was Gotera's first poetry collection; critic Will Hochman called "Dragonfly" "a collection of poems that feels like a scalpel – in the book's cultural wingspan, Vince Gotera flies through Vietnam, rock and roll, terrorism and art with a voice that is iconoclastic, steely and real." Gotera's work has appeared in such literary magazines as "Ploughshares", "Caliban", "Amerasia", "The Kenyon Review", "The Asian Pacific American Journal", "Zone 3", and others, as well as in anthologies like "Contemporary Fiction by Filipinos in America", "Tilting the Continent: Southeast Asian American Writing", and "From Totems to Hip-Hop: A Multicultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas, 1900–2002".
Vince Gotera | Works
This dragonfly is 24 to 34 millimeters long, with a hindwing 25 to 30 millimeters long. It can be identified by the brown spots at the bases and tips of the wings. The pterostigma is yellow in younger individuals, and red in older. The face is yellow, turning red in older male specimens. The thorax is yellow-brown with a large dark stripe and several smaller brown stripes. The abdomen is dark with paler markings.
Celithemis elisa | Description
Many dragonflies have brilliant iridescent or metallic colours produced by structural coloration, making them conspicuous in flight. An adult dragonfly's compound eyes have nearly 24,000 ommatidia each. Fossils of very large dragonfly ancestors in the Protodonata are found from 325 million years ago (Mya) in Upper Carboniferous rocks; these had wingspans up to about . There are about 3,000 extant species. Most are tropical, with fewer species in temperate regions. Loss of wetland habitat threatens dragonfly populations around the world. Dragonflies are predators, both in their aquatic larval stage, when they are known as nymphs or naiads, and as adults.
Dragonfly | Introduction
The thorax bears two pairs of wings and three pairs of legs. The wings are long, veined, and membranous, narrower at the tip and wider at the base. The hindwings are broader than the forewings and the venation is different at the base. The veins carry haemolymph, which is analogous to blood in vertebrates and carries out many similar functions, but which also serves a hydraulic function to expand the body between nymphal stages (instars) and to expand and stiffen the wings after the adult emerges from the final nymphal stage. The leading edge of each wing has a node where other veins join the marginal vein, and the wing is able to flex at this point.
Dragonfly | General description
Some tribals also call the delicate creatures "Thumbiana" ("thumbi" means "dragonfly") for the speed with which the pachyderms run through trees and rocks when disturbed.
Kallana | Introduction
It is a medium sized dragonfly with emerald-green eyes. Its thorax is metallic green with a golden reflex. There is no humeral stripe; but an oblique citron-yellow stripe bordering the antero-lateral suture, and a similar stripe on the lower posterior border of metepimeron. Beneath the side is blackish, striped with yellow. Abdomen is black. The borders of segment 2 ventrally yellow, and also a narrow incomplete annule on the apical border. Anal appendages are black. The male is easily distinguished by the shape of its anal appendages, and the female by the unique shape of its vesicle. Fraser (1936) states that most of the specimens were observed flying quite low over coffee bushes or along the borders of ferny banks.
Idionyx galeata | Description and habitat
However, the addition of a horse is finally enough to kill her. Her inability to survive after swallowing the horse is an event that abruptly and unexpectedly applies real-world logic to the song, directly contradicting her formerly established logic-defying animal-swallowing capability. There are many variations of phrasing in the lyrics, especially for the description of swallowing each animal. The spider and fly are described in each verse, but the other animals are only described when they are introduced starting with the bird. Three versions of the rhyme were collected in the journal "Hoosier Folklore" in December 1947, beginning respectively "There was an old lady — she swallowed a fly", "Poor little old lady, she swallowed a fly" and "A little old lady swallowed a fly".
There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly | Introduction
It is also believed that abundant fireflies in woody areas are the embers from the Kapre's lit cigars or tobacco pipe. There might be Aztec influence there too since cigars and tobacco are a Native-American invention.
Kapre | Behavior
"Damselfly" is a 2005 short film directed by Ben O'Connor. "Damselfly" is also the title of a 2012 novel in the "Faeble" series by S. L. Naeole, and of a 1994 poem by August Kleinzahler, which contains the lines "And that blue there, cobalt / a moment, then iridescent, / fragile as a lady's pin / hovering above the nasturtium?" The poet John Engels published "Damselfly, Trout, Heron" in his 1983 collection "Weather-Fear: New and Selected Poems". Fishing flies that mimic damselfly nymphs are sometimes used in wet-fly fishing, where the hook and line are allowed to sink below the surface.
Damselfly | In culture
From this, they drew parallels with their god Atum, who also begat children alone. In the Shinto of Japan, dragonflies are mentioned in haiku poems, for example behaving as if on pilgrimage, or gathering in the Bon festival of the dead. In the Quran, the honeybee is the only creature that speak directly to God. Mohammed wrote in the 68-69 verses: And your Lord taught the honey bee to build its cells in hills, on trees, and in (men's) habitations; Then to eat of all the produce (of the earth), and find with skill the spacious paths of its Lord: there issues from within their bodies a drink of varying colours, wherein is healing for men: verily in this is a Sign for those who give thought.
Insects in religion | Insect symbols
Flies play a variety of symbolic roles in different cultures. These include both positive and negative roles in religion. In the traditional Navajo religion, Big Fly is an important spirit being. In Christian demonology, Beelzebub is a demonic fly, the "Lord of the Flies", and a god of the Philistines. Flies have appeared in literature since ancient Sumer. In a Sumerian poem, a fly helps the goddess Inanna when her husband Dumuzid is being chased by "galla" demons. In the Mesopotamian versions of the flood myth, the dead corpses floating on the waters are compared to flies. Later, the gods are said to swarm "like flies" around the hero Utnapishtim's offering.
Fly | Symbolism
Although generally fairly similar, dragonflies differ from damselflies in several, easily recognizable traits. Dragonflies are strong fliers with fairly robust bodies and they have wings that are broad near the base; at rest the wings are held out to the side. Damselflies tend to be less robust, and appear weaker in flight; their wings are narrow near the base and (in most species) held folded back over the abdomen when perched. Dragonfly eyes occupy much of the animal's head, touching (or nearly touching) each other across the face. In damselflies, there is typically a gap in between the eyes.
External morphology of Odonata | Differences between dragonflies and damselflies
Dragonflies are hemimetabolous insects; they do not have a pupal stage and undergo an incomplete metamorphosis with a series of nymphal stages from which the adult emerges. Eggs laid inside plant tissues are usually shaped like grains of rice, while other eggs are the size of a pinhead, ellipsoidal, or nearly spherical. A clutch may have as many as 1500 eggs, and they take about a week to hatch into aquatic nymphs or naiads which moult between six and 15 times (depending on species) as they grow. Most of a dragonfly's life is spent as a nymph, beneath the water's surface.
Dragonfly | Life cycle
It is a medium sized dragonfly with thorax black on dorsum, and yellow on the sides. There is a slightly oblique ante-humeral stripe and two narrow parallel black stripes on the sutures enclosing an equally narrow yellow line. Abdomen is black, marked with yellow. Segment 1 has a large spot on the dorsum and the sides. Segment 2 has a mid-dorsal spot. Segment 3 to 7 have basal rings, narrow on 3 to 6, occupying the basal half on segment 7. Segment 8 to 10 are unmarked. Anal appendages are yellow, black on the base. This species is found in banks of montane forest streams where it breeds.
Davidioides martini | Description and habitat
It is a large dragonfly with its head rather broad from side to side and eyes are moderately separated with emerald green colour. Its thorax is black with three oblique bright yellow stripes. Its wings are transparent with dark brown apices and black pterostigma. Abdomen is black with yellow markings. The colour and markings of the female is very similar to the male. It is commonly found in mountains in the Western Ghats, soaring in high altitudes. The species is named after .
Chlorogomphus campioni | Description and habitat
The river dropwing is a medium-sized dragonfly with a bright orange to reddish colouration and small orange patches on the hindwings. The abdomen shows small black dorsal stripes. The eyes are brownish orange. The female is stouter than the male and more mottled. The species often perches conspicuously on reeds or sedges.
Trithemis pluvialis | Description
The Southern United States term "snake doctor" refers to a folk belief that dragonflies follow snakes around and stitch them back together if they are injured.
Insects in mythology | Symbols, amulets and omens
With the foliage came butterflies, other insects, and a plethora of singing birds.
The Desert (Dragon Prince) | Land
Atoconeura is a genus of dragonflies in the family Libellulidae. These dragonflies are generally about 28 to 39 millimeters long and are shiny black with yellow markings. They are native to Africa, where they are usually found along fast-flowing rivers in forested habitat at some elevation. The genus has likely been isolated in higher-altitude habitat, and most of the species are limited to highlands. Species include:
Atoconeura | Introduction
It is a medium-sized dragonfly with dark thorax with slight purple pruinescence and purple colored abdomen. Young males have red abdomen as in "Orthetrum chrysis". Females of both species look similar. It breeds in ponds, lakes and sluggish streams.
Orthetrum pruinosum | Description and habitat
Scarab beetles held religious and cultural symbolism in Old Egypt, Greece and some shamanistic Old World cultures. The ancient Chinese regarded cicadas as symbols of rebirth or immortality. In Mesopotamian literature, the epic poem of Gilgamesh has allusions to Odonata that signify the impossibility of immortality. Among the Aborigines of Australia of the Arrernte language groups, honey ants and witchetty grubs served as personal clan totems. In the case of the 'San' bush-men of the Kalahari, it is the praying mantis that holds much cultural significance including creation and zen-like patience in waiting.
Insect | In culture
"Diplacodes trivialis" is small dragonfly with bluish eyes and greenish-yellow or olivaceous thorax and abdomen with black marks. In very old adults, the whole thorax and abdomen become uniform pruinosed blue. Clear wings, without apical or basal markings, and the creamy white anal appendages and deep pruinescence in adults help to distinguish this species from others in its genus. It breeds in ponds, wet rice fields, shallow lakes, drainage ditches and similar habitats. It is one of the most common dragonflies in Asia, found in both the plains and hills and in dry and wet areas.
Diplacodes trivialis | Description and habitat
It is a small dragonfly with brown-capped greenish-yellow eyes. Its thorax is blackish brown, marked with yellow. There is a broad oval antehumeral (situated in front of the fore legs) stripe and a short transverse stripe bordering it just below. Laterally there are three stripes. The wings are transparent, and palely tinted with yellow at the extreme base. The abdomen in the male is blood-red, tapered from base to end, and marked with black. Segment 1 is black, with its apical border narrowly red. Segment 2 has its base broadly black and apical border less so. Segments 3 to 8 have the borders narrowly black and the mid-dorsal carina broadly so.
Lyriothemis acigastra | Description
The Aztec dancer ("Argia nahuana") damselfly is one of the pond damsels. The dark black stripe on the side of the thorax is forked from front to back. Other field marks include blue postocular spots, pale blue legs with a black stripe, and a blue ring on the seventh segment of the abdomen.
Aztec dancer | Introduction
The critics Larry Silver and Pamela H. Smith write that the image provides "an explicit link between heaven and earth.. to suggest a cosmic resonance between sacred and profane, celestial and terrestrial, macrocosm and microcosm."
The Holy Family with the Dragonfly | Insect
A dragonfly is a flying insect of the order Odonata. Dragonfly or DragonFly may also refer to:
Dragonfly (disambiguation) | Introduction
They are more sensitive than dragonfly nymphs to oxygen levels and suspended fine particulate matter, and do not bury themselves in the mud. The nymphs proceed through about a dozen moults as they grow. In the later stages, the wing pads become visible. When fully developed, the nymphs climb out of the water and take up a firm stance, the skin on the thorax splits and the adult form wriggles out. This has a soft body at first and hangs or stands on its empty larval case. It pumps haemolymph into its small limp wings, which expand to their full extent.
Damselfly | Life cycle
It is a large dragonfly characterized by its homogeneous colouring of dull browns and greens, by its long and thin anal appendages, and by its crepuscular habits. Its principal food appears to be mosquitoes and microlepidoptera. During the day it rests in dark thickets. Fully matured specimens have bright colours; blues and greens developing very late in life. Young specimens have brown color with some dark shades. Females are exactly similar to the males in colors and markings. It is very closely related to "G. subinterrupta" and it is difficult to distinguish them. But the relative lengths of the superior and inferior anal appendages are different.
Gynacantha dravida | Description and habitat
It is a medium-sized dragonfly with red eyes. thorax and abdomen. Its wings are transparent with a amber colored spot surrounded by a dark-brown patch in the base of hind-wings. Its abdomen is blood-red, with some black marking on the dorsum of segments 8 and 9. Female is similar to the male; but yellowish in color. The black spots on the dorsum is repeated on segments 3 to 7. Juvenile and sub-adult males also have these marks. This species breeds in ponds and slow flowing rivers, typically in lowland areas. The males often found perch on exposed twigs. This species has managed to colonise urban water bodies and park ponds.
Urothemis signata | Description and habitat
Mating in dragonflies is a complex, precisely choreographed process. First, the male has to attract a female to his territory, continually driving off rival males. When he is ready to mate, he transfers a packet of sperm from his primary genital opening on segment 9, near the end of his abdomen, to his secondary genitalia on segments 2–3, near the base of his abdomen. The male then grasps the female by the head with the claspers at the end of his abdomen; the structure of the claspers varies between species, and may help to prevent interspecific mating. The pair flies in tandem with the male in front, typically perching on a twig or plant stem.
Dragonfly | Reproduction
As a medium-sized dragonfly "G. flavipes" is 50–55 mm long and with an average wingspan of 70–80 mm. The eyes are widely separated, this is a typical genus-specific feature, males have blue while females have green eyes. Both sexes have predominantly yellow legs and the males has thin angled appendages, while his 10th segment is entirely black dorsally.
Gomphus flavipes | Morphology
Several years of their lives are spent as nymphs living in fresh water; the adult stage of some dragonflies may be as long as ten weeks, but most species have an adult lifespan on the order of five weeks or less, and some last only a few days. They are fast, agile fliers, sometimes migrating across oceans, and often live near water. They have a uniquely complex mode of reproduction involving indirect insemination, delayed fertilization, and sperm competition. During mating, the male grasps the female at the back of the head, and the female curls her abdomen under her body to pick up sperm from the male's secondary genitalia at the front of his abdomen, forming the "heart" or "wheel" posture.
Dragonfly | Introduction
Societies across the world have from ancient to modern times used the shapes and colours of insects, and sometimes their actual bodies, in their art, whether jewellery or ceramics, body painting or textiles, paintings or sculptures. In North America, the Navajo make symbolic sandpaintings of blowflies, cicadas, corn bugs and dragonflies. The Hopi draw a variety of insects, but especially butterflies, on pottery. In other parts of the world, insects, most often honeybees, are shown in ancient rock art. Australian Aborigines often represented totemic insects in cave paintings and ritual objects. The art of cultures as widely separated as Ancient Greece, China and Japan includes bees, butterflies, crickets, cicadas and dragonflies.
Insects in art | Overview
This is a list of dragons in literature. For fictional dragons in other media, see the list of dragons in popular culture. For dragons from legends and mythology, see the list of dragons in mythology and folklore.
List of dragons in literature | Introduction
This dragonfly is found at shaded pools, such as those found in gallery forest.
Tetrathemis polleni | Habitat
H. G. Wells introduced giant wasps in his 1904 novel "The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth", making use of the newly discovered growth hormones to lend plausibility to his science fiction. Lafcadio Hearn's essay "Butterflies" analyses the treatment of the butterfly in Japanese literature, both prose and poetry. He notes that these often allude to Chinese tales, such as of the young woman that the butterflies took to be a flower. He translates 22 Japanese haiku poems about butterflies, including one by the haiku master Matsuo Bashō, said to suggest happiness in springtime: "Wake up! Wake up!—I will make thee my comrade, thou sleeping butterfly." The novelist Vladimir Nabokov was the son of a professional lepidopterist, and was interested in butterflies himself.
Human interactions with insects | In literature and film
"I cannot fly- I have no wings; I cannot run- I have no legs; But I can creep where the black bird sings And eat her speckled eggs, ha, ha, And eat her speckled eggs."
The Crows of Pearblossom | The Snake's Poem
The abdomen is black with dull orange markings, and has prominent flaps on each side of segment eight. The flaps may serve to hold the eggs in place during oviposition. This dragonfly is found in terrestrial areas with standing water. This can include near small ponds, rice fields or marshes where it breeds.
Potamarcha congener | Description and habitat
A large dragonfly (length 61–64 mm; wingspan 87–91 mm). The eyes are green and the face deep yellow to greenish yellow; the upper frons has a central black spot within a yellow ring. The thorax is brown with green stripes, and the abdomen green with brown markings. The wings are slightly smoky with brown and yellow veins and reddish-brown to yellow-brown pterostigmata.
Pinheyschna subpupillata | Description
Fabio Jara : "Bees and Wasps : Ethno-Entomological Notions and Myths among the Andoke of the Caquetá River". In :- "LATIN AMERICAN INDIAN LITERATURES JOURNAL", Vol. 11 (1995)
Andoque people | References
(2006).
List of dragonflies of Menorca | Introduction
The pair often remain together with the male still clasping the female while she lays eggs within the tissue of plants in or near water using a robust ovipositor.
Damselfly | Introduction
It is a medium sized dragonfly with dark face and bluish eyes. Its thorax is also black with a broad apple green stripe on both sides. Segments 1-2 and 8-10 in the abdomen are black and the remaining segments are pruinosed with azure blue. It is usually found in marshes associated with hill streams where it breeds.
Orthetrum triangulare | Description and habitat
Dragonflies (suborder Anisoptera) are heavy-bodied, strong-flying insects that hold their wings horizontally both in flight and at rest. By contrast, damselflies (suborder Zygoptera) have slender bodies and fly more weakly; most species fold their wings over the abdomen when stationary, and the eyes are well separated on the sides of the head. An adult dragonfly has three distinct segments, the head, thorax, and abdomen as in all insects. It has a chitinous exoskeleton of hard plates held together with flexible membranes. The head is large with very short antennae. It is dominated by the two compound eyes, which cover most of its surface.
Dragonfly | General description
However, the poems are often focused on the secondary participants of these events, emphasizing human experience and interaction. They conserved archaic feudal period customs, manners, etiquette, descriptions of attire, weapon, mythological dragon or snake and vila and so on. They integrate different cultural and ethnic layers and represent significant monument of South Slavic folklore.
Bugarštica | Characteristics
Dragons and dragon motifs are featured in many works of modern literature, particularly within the fantasy genre. As early as the eighteenth century, critical thinkers such as Denis Diderot were already asserting that too much literature had been published on dragons: "There are already in books all too many fabulous stories of dragons". In Lewis Carroll's classic children's novel "Through the Looking-Glass" (1872), one of the inset poems describes the Jabberwock, a kind of dragon. Carroll's illustrator John Tenniel, a famous political cartoonist, humorously showed the Jabberwock with the waistcoat, buck teeth, and myopic eyes of a Victorian university lecturer, such as Carroll himself.
Dragon | Modern depictions
It is a small black dragonfly with yellow markings. Its eyes and thorax are black. Abdomen is also black, marked with yellow spots, obscured with bluish pruinescence in full adults. Bases of wings are dark. Apices of the wings are narrowly black; but transparent in "I. l. sita". Anal appendages are dark. Female has brown eyes and yellow thorax, marked with black. The bases of wings are in amber-yellow. Abdomen is black, marked with yellow spots up to segment 8. Anal appendages are dark. It breeds in weeded ponds and lakes.
Indothemis limbata | Description and habitat
had to be shown in a proper setting just as one sees them on the reservation. The sheep could not be shown grazing in a pasture, nor the horses in a stable, because such things are not Navajo."
Native Americans in children's literature | Children's literature written or illustrated by American Indians
Dragonflies and damselflies are predatory both in the aquatic nymphal and adult stages. Nymphs feed on a range of freshwater invertebrates and larger ones can prey on tadpoles and small fish. Adults capture insect prey in the air, making use of their acute vision and highly controlled flight. The mating system of dragonflies is complex and they are among the few insect groups that have a system of indirect sperm transfer along with sperm storage, delayed fertilization, and sperm competition. Adult males vigorously defend territories near water; these areas provide suitable habitat for the larvae to develop, and for females to lay their eggs.
Dragonfly | Ecology
The adults of "Onychogomphus forcipatus" grow up to long, with a wingspan of . The eyes of these medium sized dragonflies are widely separated and grey-to-green. The two black lines on the side of the thorax are relatively narrow and touch the midline. It has a yellow line on the vertex and two cells above the anal triangle. The abdomen in males is fitted with three hooks of large size (anal appendages). Cercoids may be dark and have a subterminal tooth. The base of the hindwing is angled in males and rounded in females. This species is rather similar to "Onychogomphus uncatus".
Onychogomphus forcipatus | Description
The species name "atratus" is a Latin word meaning clothed in black. named this species of dragonfly after its blackish brown abdomen.
Hemigomphus atratus | Etymology
It is a medium sized dragonfly with dark face and greenish blue eyes. The thorax of old males are dark blue due to pruinescence. Its wings are transparent with dark amber-yellow tint in the extreme base. Its abdomen is pruinosed with blue color up to segment 8; last two segments are black. It breeds in marshes associated with forest streams, plantations and canals.
Orthetrum glaucum | Description and habitat
It is a medium sized dragonfly with red eyes, thorax and abdomen. But young males and females have a mid-dorsal citron-yellow stripe in the pro-thorax and a citron-yellow stripe on mid-dorsum of the abdominal segments. These marks get obscured by pruinescence in adult males. Color of female is brown. It breeds in open ponds, marshes and lakes.
Rhodothemis rufa | Description and habitat
Epigomphus crepidus is a species of dragonfly in the family Gomphidae. It is endemic to Mexico. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests and rivers. It is threatened by habitat loss.
Epigomphus crepidus | Introduction
Modern illustrations often include dragonfly or butterfly wings.
Fairy | Descriptions
The forewing is usually more slender and slightly longer than the hindwing. Unlike the true dragonflies, the Odonata, they had no pterostigma, and a somewhat simpler pattern of veins in the wings. Most specimens are known from wing fragments only; with only a few as complete wings, and even fewer (of the family Meganeuridae) with body impressions. These show a globose head with large dentate mandibles, strong spiny legs, a large thorax, and long and slender dragonfly-like abdomen. Like true dragonflies, they were presumably predators. A few nymphs are also known, and show mouthparts similar to those of modern dragonfly nymphs, suggesting that they were also active aquatic predators.
Meganisoptera | Introduction
It is a medium sized dragonfly with reddish eyes, yellowish red thorax and coral red abdomen. Its wings are transparent; but hind wings have a golden-brown patch in the base, bordered by a cloudy-white patch. Female is brown and lacks the cloudy-white patch in the hind-wings. It is a migrant with a permanent presence in humid parts of the tropics. It breeds in standing water-bodies; and prefers weedy ponds, swamps and lakes. They are active at dusk and dawn, as well as during cloudy days.
Tholymis tillarga | Description and habitat
It is a medium-sized dragonfly with brown-capped grey eyes and blood red tail. Its thorax is copper brown with a pair of narrow parallel yellow stripes on dorsal side and yellow with stripes on the sides. Segments 1 and 2 of the abdomen have broad lateral stripes and a fine mid-dorsal stripe. Segments 3 to 8 are bright crimson-red with apical sutures narrowly black. Segments 9 and 10 are black. Anal appendages are black. The abdomen of the female is brown. It breeds in marshes associated with ponds and streams.
Lathrecista asiatica | Description and habitat
These dragonflies usually inhabit clean rivers with a little faster running water and gravel or sandy banks. Occasionally they are also present at large lakes.
Onychogomphus forcipatus | Habitat
It is a small dragonfly with dark reddish-brown eyes. Its thorax is dark chocolate-brown on dorsum and humeral region, paling on sides. Wings are transparent, tinted with deep golden-amber at base. Abdomen and anal appendages are bright red. Female is similar to the male; but greenish-yellow in colors. It breeds in weedy ponds and lakes.
Aethriamanta brevipennis | Description and habitat
It is a medium-sized dragonfly with a wingspan of 60-85mm. Adults are grayish to greenish yellow with black and pale markings and green eyes. Its abdomen is greenish-yellow, marked with black. It is very similar to "Orthetrum serapia" in appearance, with both species appearing in northern Australia. Pale markings on segment four of the abdomen do not extend into the posterior section when viewed from above on "Orthetrum sabina". Females are similar to males in shape, color and size; differing only in sexual characteristics. This dragonfly perches motionless on shrubs and dry twigs for long periods. It voraciously preys on smaller butterflies and dragonflies.
Orthetrum sabina | Description and habitat
Around them are various animals: a lizard, a millipede, a snake, a bull, a donkey, a spider, a scorpion and a frog, each of which has a cigarette tied to its back. These animals represent the various aspects of nature. Tradition states that certain illnesses are due to “bad air” or to supernatural forces that become offended if certain courtesies are not observed. One of these courtesies is to greet and/or offer food to an ant hill when walking by. Another is to make an offering in ravines and other places where water flows. Most of these beliefs have pre-Hispanic roots.
Tlayacapan | Pottery and juego de aire
There are five main vein stems on dragonfly and damselfly wings, and wing veins are fused at their bases. The main veins are: A nodus is formed where the subcostal vein meets the leading edge of the wing. The dark pterostigma is carried near the wing tip.
External morphology of Odonata | Wings
This dragonfly is found in and near a wide variety of slow-flowing and still-water habitats. These include streams, rivers, intermittent rivers, freshwater lakes, intermittent freshwater lakes, freshwater marshes, intermittent freshwater marshes, irrigation canals and ditches.
Trithemis arteriosa | Habitat
They are apparently on the wing throughout the year, being especially common in August, flying about the branches of Tamarisk and visiting the flowers of "Adenocarpus viscosus". I obtained a specimen at Orotava in the immediate neighbourhood of the old dragon-tree, which was then still standing.
Leptotes webbianus | Description from Seitz
Most notable may be "The Axolotl and the Ammocoete" which speculates an evolutionary relationship between the Axolotl and the Ammocoete. Alister Hardy wrote on this in the Introduction to "Larval Forms": Most of these poems were written before 1922 and reflect the knowledge and theories of that time. In some of the poems, some of the animals, or species of animals, have speaking parts. The poems included in his final work are:
Walter Garstang | "Larval Forms and Other Zoological Verses"
The flight period extends from April to mid October, but this dragonfly is more common in late summer. Adults feed on soft-bodied flying insects. After mating females usually fly in tandem with males during oviposition, performed in flight by dipping the tip of the abdomen into the water. Larvae live in aquatic vegetation. They feed on many different aquatic insects (mosquito larvae, mayfly larvae, other fly larvae, small fish and tadpoles).
Band-winged meadowhawk | Biology and behavior
"G. flavipes", as all dragonflies, are predators; they capture smaller insect in flight. Imagos are rarely seen, the easiest way to observe them is in the mating period or during the emergence of young adults. Mating usually takes place in June or July. During the day adult males search for females, far from the riverbank, in low altitude above the waterfront. If they successfully catch a female copulation takes place in the shelter of water edge willows. After fertilization females fly 20–30 cm above the water and lay eggs (one at a time or in a small packets) into the water.
Gomphus flavipes | Behaviour and life cycle
Curling back upwards, it completes its emergence, swallowing air, which plumps out its body, and pumping haemolymph into its wings, which causes them to expand to their full extent. Dragonflies in temperate areas can be categorized into two groups, an early group and a later one. In any one area, individuals of a particular "spring species" emerge within a few days of each other. The springtime darner ("Basiaeschna janata"), for example, is suddenly very common in the spring, but disappears a few weeks later and is not seen again until the following year. By contrast, a "summer species" emerges over a period of weeks or months, later in the year.
Dragonfly | Life cycle
The aqua blue face of the blue-faced, green/turquoise when dead, meadowhawk may not be obvious to a casual observer, but is an important field mark distinguishing it from similar-looking meadowhawks in the genus "Sympetrum", such as "Sympetrum vicinum". This small dragonfly reaches a maximum total length of 38 mm. The thorax is grayish or olive brown. A mature male has a bright red abdomen, with black stripes; in females and juveniles, it remains brown. Both genders have six black rings on their abdomens. They can be found from summer through fall in Midwest North America close to water sources.
Sympetrum ambiguum | Description