The information contained within may not be the most current and accurate depending on when it is accessed. You are here Home. Why so Many Dragonflies? By Donald Lewis, Department of Entomology.
By Richard Minnick. August 25, At an experimental site in west Devon , the wetland created by beavers damming a small stream saw the arrival of the small red damselfly, which was not found for tens of kilometres either side of the site and is not known for its long-distance flight. Many dragonflies are capable of long-distance flight and warmer weather is likely to encourage other continental species to appear in Britain or establish themselves as residents in the near future.
The winter damselfly unusually overwinters as a fully-grown adult rather than a nymph in a pond and one has already turned up in a porch in south Wales. Another future visitor could be the violet dropwing , a spectacularly coloured African species which has colonised the Iberian peninsula and has now crossed into south-west France. But more extreme weather conditions is not good news for all dragonflies, with hotter weather likely to push declining species such as the common hawker and the black darter farther north.
It is harder to get evidence of species disappearing than to spot new species turning up. And that's why you're starting to get the swarms. They do this pretty much every fall. They can do it throughout the year but you see a lot more of them now than you would earlier in the year.
I mean they are amazing predators. They can eat all kinds of giant things. They've been known to eat birds, like hummingbirds. Some species have been documented catching and eating hummingbirds.
And I think anytime you get an insect that's big enough to turn the tides on birds, that's really pretty cool. I want to know where the behavior forms in the first place, how that swarming pattern occurs, what are they doing, why are they doing it and how it benefits our environment.
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