Volunteers scour state to study dragonflies, damselflies

UNITY – There’s a beautiful dragonfly lying in the center of the road and you’re coming upon it at 50 miles per hour. Do you: (a) ignore the bug and cruise on by; (b) try to squash it with your left tire; or (c) slam on your brakes, skidding into the sandy shoulder, then run into the road to rescue the insect before another car comes along.

Dave Potter made an emergency dragonfly stop just last week. That zeal is what makes the Unity College biology professor an ideal “citizen scientist” for the state’s five-year survey of dragonflies and damselflies, a related group.

Potter is one of 150 volunteers for the Maine Damselfly and Dragonfly Survey who chose to spend his summer scanning the skies for a variable dancer or a sedge sprite, said Phillip deMaynadier, the state biologist who is coordinating the survey for the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

The volunteers have collected more than 10,000 specimens since the survey began in 1998, representing 162 different species – including seven that had never been spotted in Maine before.

“It’s a 150 percent increase in the scientific knowledge that had been accumulated over the previous century,” deMaynadier said.

Dragonflies and damselflies can be critical indicators of an ecosystem’s health, but scientists first must learn when and where to look for sensitive species, like Maine’s endangered ringed boghaunter, deMaynadier said.

The survey, funded through state and federal grants, is intended to identify all of Maine’s dragonfly and damselfly species and to gain some insight into their abundance, he said.

Twenty-seven species are considered rare in Maine, but before scientists can start blaming human influence, they need to learn more about the habits of each individual species.

“Are they endangered, or are they simply cryptic and difficult to detect?” deMaynadier asked.

These ancient insects interact with humans every day, in dozens of different environments, but common knowledge about dragonflies is seriously lacking, said the biologist, professing a fondness for the underdogs of the animal kingdom.

Fairy tales about “devil’s darning needles” that sew up children’s mouths when they tell lies haven’t helped the dragonfly’s reputation. Neither has the popular but groundless belief that the insects’ long bodies end in stingers.

“People sometimes even ask, ‘Are damselflies female dragonflies?’- that’s a pretty creative question,” deMaynadier said, explaining that the two families of insects are closely related but distinctly individual.

Damselflies, typically the smaller and more delicate of the two, have uneven wings they hold close to their bodies. They are more common, and tend to be more precarious fliers, fluttering around ponds so slowly that children can pluck them from the air. Their eyes are located on the sides of their heads, and in Maine, their markings are drawn in shades of blue, black or brown,

Dragonflies typically have thicker bodies and tremendously large compound eyes that touch atop their heads. Their bodies tend to be more brightly colored, and the parallel wings of many species sparkle with iridescent shades of blue or green. These broad, horizontal wings make the largest dragonflies resemble biplanes in flight. Maine’s largest dragonfly, a four-inch scarlet beast called a comet darter, dwarfs some birds.

“It basically rules the airspace over large ponds, eating everything in sight,” deMaynadier said.

Chasing a common white-tailed skimmer along a pond near the Unity College campus, volunteer and recent graduate Amanda Baker was reverential when she described the speed and agility of large dragonflies.

“They’re fast, and they seem to know when you’re stalking them. They’re very smart. They’ll stay just outside the reach of your …,” Baker said, stopping midsentence to swing her net backward over her left shoulder, striking blindly at empty air as a dragonfly buzzed by her right ear.

“I get determined, and a little angry,” Baker said. “There have been times when I’ve jumped into the water to get one at the last minute. … My mom used the word addicted the other day.”

Most ecologists have great respect for dragonflies and damselflies as one of nature’s great success stories. Fossil records indicate that some dragonflies reached a wingspan of several feet and lived side-by-side with dinosaurs. They have survived, in one form or another, for more than 300 million years by being opportunists.

With thousands of species worldwide, the biodiversity is dizzying.

Dragonflies and damselflies, collectively called odenates by scientists, fill dozens of habitat niches that have been ignored by other animals. They can live anywhere wet, from the tiniest vernal pool to a brackish estuary, and they eat everything they can fit in their mouths – including black flies, mosquitoes and one another, deMaynadier said.

Odenates spend most of their lives as aquatic larvae, sometimes living only a single day as an adult.

“What you see on the wing really is the most ephemeral period of their life history,” deMaynadier said.

The colorful adults are perfect prey for novice naturalists, however. Volunteers catch and preserve specimens, but leave complicated identifications to an odenate expert in Halifax, Nova Scotia, named Paul-Michael Brunelle.

Brunelle’s unavailability for an interview says something about his single-mindedness. The scientist spends summers traveling the East Coast, living in his van and stalking rare species of dragonflies.

Many of the citizen scientists, who find themselves traveling with a butterfly net behind the car seat and a freezer full of preserved bugs, are beginning to understand his dedication.

“Once you pick up the net, it’s hard to stop,” Potter said.