Saturday 7 February 2015

An Early Emerger........ I Hope Not!

After a pleasant lay in this morning, I completed a few chores and then took a drive over to Nethergong to see if I could find and dragonfly and damselfly larvae. I really wanted to find a decent sized Emperor Dragonfly larvae in which I could get some photos of but despite an hour and a half searching the margins, I could not find one. I have read that during the colder months they move off into deeper water so perhaps that explains why I did not find any. I did find about 30 damselfly larvae, mostly Azure Damselfly in the margins and I took a few back with me to look at in the tank and get a few photos of them throughout the afternoon. There was one damselfly in particular that stood out a bit, it was about 18mm in length and only had 1 caudal lamellae. It was very dark brown in colour and I could not see many features on it to help identify it. In the water the wing buds stood out well and it spent quite a bit of time near the surface. I have read before that prior to emerging that damselflies wing buds lift from the thorax and that the caudal Lamellae can fall off. This evening as I write, the nymph is currently on a small stick at the surface with part of its head just out of the water. It has been like this for a few hours and again, several days prior to emergence I have read that they start breathing air in preparation to emerge. Rearing larvae at home does come with a warning. if the tank is left in a warm place, the temperature can trigger early emergence but my tank is in a very cold conservatory. I may be reading into this completely wrong and I hope I am but there does seem to be some signs that this damselfly is starting that process. Has anyone any experience in this and do the photos show any signs that this damselfly is indeed about to think about coming an adult. I would appreciate any views on this should you have any. 


Damselfly Nymph

2 comments:

  1. Stay in, little Darling, it's cold and lonely out there. :-)
    Beautiful shots!

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  2. Not a good idea coming out in this!! Great shots though Marc.

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