Nature: Dragonfly rarities pop up in survey

A young male Paiute dancer (Argia alberta) at Cedar Bog/Jim McCormac

Columbus Dispatch

June 30, 2019

NATURE
Jim McCormac

The Ohio Dragonfly Survey, which began in 2017, is in its third and final season of field work, and mountains of records have been contributed by scores of volunteers. More than 43,000 individual observations have been submitted by about 1,100 contributors.

So far, about 165 odonata (dragonfly and damselfly) species have been documented in the state. Most are common, at least regionally, and make up the bulk of records. The top five most frequent species are eastern pondhawk, eastern forktail, blue dasher, fragile forktail and common whitetail.

Those damsels and dragons are low-hanging fruit. Important to document, but easy to find. However, it’s the rarities that really get dragon hunters pumped. Some utterly unexpected species have turned up during the survey.

I crossed paths with one of these new Ohio odonates recently at Cedar Bog near Urbana in Champaign County. Last year, uber-dragonflier Jim Lemon found Ohio’s first record of Paiute dancer (a damselfly) in a Clark County fen. He went on to document more dancers at Cedar Bog, and Sarah White located a Greene County population.

The beautiful Paiute dancer resembles a few species common here. Lemon, who has contributed nearly 7,000 observations to the dragonfly survey so far, went back through his old photos. He unearthed Paiute dancer images from Cedar Bog dating to 2014, mislabeled as common look-alike species. Many of the state’s dragonfly experts had apparently passed them by for at least several years at the heavily studied Cedar Bog.

That this insect would occur here was a shock. There is only one other small population west of the Mississippi River, in central Indiana. One must travel 500 miles to Missouri before Paiute dancers become reasonably common. The core of the range is much farther west yet: the Great Basin region of Arizona, California, Nevada and Utah.

Although we can’t be sure of how long the Paiute dancer has occupied Ohio, there are other, more clear-cut recent range expansions. Lemon also discovered our first jade clubtails last year in Auglaize and Shelby counties. A species of the Great Plains, the Ohio population is the easternmost record.

Lemon also found Ohio’s first swift setwing in 2014 in Champaign County, and he and others have located populations in eight additional counties since. This distinctive, conspicuous dragonfly’s main range is the southern one-third of the U.S. south into Central America.

Survey coordinator MaLisa Spring located double-ringed pennants this year in Jackson County in southern Ohio. No one anticipated this discovery; this beautiful dragonfly normally occurs well south of Ohio.

Nina Harfmann found the little blue dragonlet this year in Jackson County. No one had seen one in the state since 1933, the only prior record. It, too, is a species of the far south.

Several damsels and dragons have staged massive immigrations into Ohio in the past few years, all southern species. They include blue-faced meadowhawk, great blue skimmer, lilypad forktail and slaty skimmer.

Dragonflies are powerful aerialists capable of quickly expanding ranges when favorable changes open new opportunities. In 2001, dragonfly expert Dr. Dennis Paulson published a paper titled “Recent Odonata Records from Southern Florida — Effects of Global Warming?” Perhaps we could ask Paulson’s question here, now.

For more information about the Ohio Dragonfly Survey, visit u.osu.edu/ohioodonatasurvey or contact Spring at spring.99@osu.edu.

Naturalist Jim McCormac writes a column for The Dispatch on the first, third and fifth Sundays of the month. He also writes about nature at www.jimmccormac.blogspot.com.

Some dragons of late

A blue dasher, Pachydiplax longipennis, adopts the obelisking posture. On hot days, as this one was, a perched dragonfly will often point its abdomen directly at the sun. By doing so, it minimizes heat absorption by exposing less of its body to direct sunlight. Obelisking dragonflies make for great photographic subjects.

I have been doing my level best this field season to focus on surveying for dragonflies. It's the final year of the three-year Ohio Dragonfly Survey, and our last crack at fleshing out the distribution and status of Ohio's Odonata (damselflies and dragonflies). If you photograph these insects in Ohio, we'd love to have your records and they're very easy to submit. CLICK HERE for instructions.

A Carolina saddlebags, Tramea carolina, moors to an old plant stalk. It's been a good year for these.

I had the good fortune of making a recent foray into various west-central Ohio haunts with uber-dragonflier Jim Lemon. He's submitted over 7,000 records to the Ohio Dragonfly Survey to date, a remarkably prolific effort and far beyond anyone else. This was one of the special species Jim showed me, a jade clubtail, Arigomphus submedianus. Lemon discovered it along the shore of Lake Loramie in Auglaize and Shelby counties last year. It was a new Ohio record, one of a number of state firsts for him.

Jade clubtail's core range is the Great Plains states, well to the west of Ohio. The habitat where Jim found this species is utterly common - shorelines of a large lake, often armored with riprap or with only a fringe of unmowed vegetation. It would seem likely that these showy clubtails inhabit other Ohio lakes, especially in the western part of the state, but no one has yet found others.

As always, click the photo to enlarge

An odd perspective on a slender spreadwing, Lestes rectangularis. This group of damselflies is noted for the wide separation between the eyes, as can clearly be seen here. The animal is perched on the stem of a rush, and was cooperative enough to allow me to sneak into position to make this shot.

Another slender spreadwing, this one carrying a complement of water mites. Such parasitism is very common in damselflies, with the larval mites appearing as tiny reddish-orange bumps on the abdomen, usually towards the base. Apparently newly hatched mites first invade the aquatic larvae of damselflies, and when a larva leaves the water and emerges from its larval case, the mites jump to the teneral (newly emergent) damselfly. Later, when the damselfly enters or nears water to mate or lay eggs, the mites hop into the water where they live out the rest of their life cycle. While the larval water mites do siphon body fluids from the damselfly host via feeding tubes, I don't believe they normally do much harm to the host.

A sphagnum sprite, Nehalennia gracilis, one of our smallest (the smallest?) damsels. They're less than an inch long, and very easily overlooked. Jim also showed me a population of these enchanting little bugs, at a beautiful fen. Sure enough, the small zone supporting these sprites was rich in sphagnum moss. Perhaps the sprites oviposit into the sphagnum and the nymphs then inhabit it, but I'm not sure about this.

Finally, a very common species, and one of our largest and showiest, the twelve-spotted skimmer, Libellula pulchella (pulchella means, essentially, beautiful or pretty). One perk of participating in this survey is the numerous opportunities to photograph these gorgeous insects. Not only that, but highly predacious dragonflies are fascinating to observe. Their powers of flight are often astonishing, and the pursuit of "dragonflying" reminds me of birding in many ways.

Again, for more information about the Ohio Dragonfly Survey, GO HERE.