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Taxon

Dragonfly Entomology

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If you click on the Dragonfly picture on the top right corner of this page, it takes you to thread started by Pujic in which he and others are having a great time experimenting with tying Dragonfly imitations.

 

I thought it would be interesting to have a “roundtable” discussion of the entomology of dragonflies. Two of Pujic’s great photos follow:

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Pujic says, “These rather big, freaky looking nymphs are a staple food of trout and bass everywhere so I thought they would be the perfect place to start. The top photo is of an actual dragon fly nymph I found under a rock in a pretty steady flowing cold water trout stream this Summer. The second photo is of an exoskeleton of a dragonfly nymph found by the shore of a Northern Ontario brook trout lake. Notice how much wider the nymph which came from the lake is compared to the specimen found in the stream….”

 

I (Taxon) am hoping participants in this thread will offer information and/or pose questions. It’s not my intent to answer questions, but rather, for others to do so. So, if anyone has an observation or question, please share it.

 

Although it’s entirely possible that this thread will be met with pregnant silence, I’m sincerely hoping there will be sufficient interest for it to be successful. Then, perhaps we can follow Pujic through each of the insects he presents to imitate in his fly tying threads.

 

Some of the potential avenues of the discussion might be: what family it may be; what the common name may be; what type(s) of water it may be found in, what type of organism appears to be hitchhiking on its wing pad, and surely many others. However, I would request that comments about imitative patterns or the tying of them be taken up on Pujic’s thread.

 

So, what observations or questions might you have about the dragonfly nymphs pictured above?

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I hope someone can chime in with family information, but here's what I've been able to find out about these buggers so far:

 

Phylum: Arthropoda

Class: Insecta

Order: Odonata

Sub Order: Epiproctophora and Zygoptera

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How do you tell if these are dragonfly or damselfly nymphs? I know that a good way to tell adults apart is dragonflys rest with their wings out at the sides and damselflys rest with their wings folded on their back. But how do you tell nymphs apart?

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Hi, Taxon,

very nice topic I should say, very nice pictures of Pujic too.

If you let me tell somethings about dragonslies, that I know.

I'll start with this: the dragonflies are some of the best predators at the insect's world.

They use to eat little shrims, may flies nymphs, and such insects.

Here in BG rivers and lakes, they use to creep at the bottom betwen the vegetation nad to cath their game, other little nymphs.

 

Here they are some pictures of the real insect:

 

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Here in BG we use them to catch chub, trout, even -

Barbus meridionalis petenyi

 

http://www.terra.hu/cgi-bin/showthumb2?36_5marna.jpg

 

and Vimba vimba

 

http://www.skes.org/images/uploaded/kalalajit/vimpa.jpg

 

I made a dragonfly immitation of as I said once, Brian Chan pattern.

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The materials of it you can see here

 

http://www.flytyingforum.com/index.php?showtopic=7345

 

I hope I helped with this info.

Best to you all!

 

Radoslav Kiskinov - the Shark

 

 

 

 

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Hey Skunked - simple rule, dragonfly nymphs are the short fatty ones such as pictured, damselfly nymphs are long and skinny, they look quite different.

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I don't know anything about dragon flies. I think I have 1 nymph in my box and it's never hit the water. Thanks to this post I've been doing some google searches and learned a little. I think I might need to tie some more. Here's one of the links I thought had some good info.A beginners's guide to dragon flies

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QUOTE (pennscreekrules @ Feb 6 2005, 07:17 AM)
I don't know anything about dragon flies. I think I have 1 nymph in my box and it's never hit the water. Thanks to this post I've been doing some google searches and learned a little. I think I might need to tie some more. Here's one of the links I thought had some good info.A beginners's guide to dragon flies

pennscreekrules-

 

Good find. Your link corrects a piece of information we had previously recorded.

It tells us Anisoptera is the suborder of Dragonflies; Zygloptera is the suborder of Damselflies; and doesn't mention Epiproctophora at all; maybe it's an invalid synonym or something.

 

Now that we know the suborder is Anisoptera, let's go one step further and try to identify the families. Pujic said, "Notice how much wider the nymph which came from the lake is compared to the specimen found in the stream….” This tells us they may be from different families. So, does anyone care to suggest which family the nymph from the stream might be, or which family the shed nymphal exoskeleton from the lake might be?

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QUOTE (skunked @ Feb 6 2005, 11:05 PM)
here's a pretty informative page I founddragonfly

Skunked-

 

Good for you; another link with some good info on Dragonflies. It even has the family name of our river specimen, Aeshnidae. Probably somewhat of a coincidence, as that's surely not the only Dragonfly family represented in Maine, but let's not look a gift horse in the mouth.

 

Okay, now that we've gotten the family, let's try for the genus. Do you see that bright spot on the top of the abdomen, directly above "h" in the word "Nymph" in the caption of the photo? It's a very visible clue to the genus.

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QUOTE (Taxon @ Feb 7 2005, 04:08 AM)


Okay, now that we've gotten the family, let's try for the genus. Do you see that bright spot on the top of the abdomen, directly above "h" in the word "Nymph" in the caption of the photo? It's a very visible clue to the genus.

I think the genus is maybe either aeshna or anax. I didn't research very well. It's 50 degrees in Pa and I've got to go fishing. I'll do a better search when I get back. Plus I'm starting to get confused. I like this post. Chaka says learning fun.

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There are two classes of nymphs, and their appearance and behavior are radically different. The "climbers" (the genus Aeshnidae) have a longer, more tapered body. They search for their prey, moving about by jet propulsion (they take in water through their mouth and expel it through their anus; I know, I know: you had a second-cousin who did that). This causes them to move in spurts. So a good dragonfly tactic is to cast an appropriate nymph and use the count-down-and-retrieve presentation, moving the fly with 6-12 inch strips with a pause between each strip.

 

The other class of nymphs (the genus Libellulidae) are boxy in appearance, being wider and shorter than their Aeshnidae cousins. As you might expect from their couch potato shape, they're not very active. Instead, they lie in ambush on the bottom. When unsuspecting and unlucky prey comes along, they spring up and nail it.

 

I got this off of westlfly.com, so after reading that I'd have to say Aeshnidae due to the long tapered body dunno.gif

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QUOTE (pennscreekrules @ Feb 7 2005, 11:51 AM)

I think the genus is maybe either aeshna or anax. I didn't research very well. It's 50 degrees in Pa and I've got to go fishing. I'll do a better search when I get back. Plus I'm starting to get confused. I like this post. Chaka says learning fun.

pennscreekrules-

 

Hint: that bright spot on the top of the abdomen, directly above "h" in the word "Nymph" in the caption of the photo could be referred to as a "conspicuous light blotch".

 

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QUOTE (skunked @ Feb 7 2005, 12:18 PM)
There are two classes of nymphs, and their appearance and behavior are radically different. The "climbers" (the genus Aeshnidae) have a longer, more tapered body. They search for their prey, moving about by jet propulsion (they take in water through their mouth and expel it through their anus; I know, I know: you had a second-cousin who did that). This causes them to move in spurts. So a good dragonfly tactic is to cast an appropriate nymph and use the count-down-and-retrieve presentation, moving the fly with 6-12 inch strips with a pause between each strip.

The other class of nymphs (the genus Libellulidae) are boxy in appearance, being wider and shorter than their Aeshnidae cousins. As you might expect from their couch potato shape, they're not very active. Instead, they lie in ambush on the bottom. When unsuspecting and unlucky prey comes along, they spring up and nail it.

I got this off of westlfly.com, so after reading that I'd have to say Aeshnidae due to the long tapered body dunno.gif

skunked-

 

Great information, but I should straighten up several points. Aeshnidae and Libellulidae are Dragonfly families rather than genera. Also, your description of their jet propulsion is just a tad off. They expand and contract their rectal chamber for purpose of respiration, passing water over their internal gills, and use a forceful expulsion (as you said) to aid forward propulsion. The part not quite right: they don't take the water in through the front end. However, the revised description doesn't necessarily extend to one's second cousin.

 

With regard to your identification of Pujic's photo of the river dweller as an Aeshnid, you're nailed it. Were you suggesting that Pujic's photo of the discarded exoskeleton of a lake dweller is a Libellulid, or were you just differentiating between the body types?

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All right here's what I've come up with I'm probably way off but all my searches for aeshnidea with conspicuous light blotches led my to this page. From the info on this page I'm going to guess Boyeria vinosa. Not sure about the vinosa part. Stream Darner would be the common name for the Boyeria I thinkBoyeria page

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