Dragonfly or the Anisoptera

A Sympetrum flaveolum (?) sample

by Utkrishta Mulmi

We were looking through our file photos and I found pictures of the dragonfly experiment that we did during last year’s winter adventures and it was so interesting that I wanted to revisit and review what happened.

Here is the scientific classification of the insect.

Scientific name: Anisoptera

Kingdom: Animalia

Clade: Euarthropoda

Phylum: Arthropoda

Class: Insecta

Order: Odonata

The class started with research on the dragonfly. It’s an insect (arthropod) so it obviously has six legs. It has transparent wings attached to its thorax. Its head has two compound eyes and two thin antennas. It also has a long segmented abdomen. Our sample was old. We had found it on the window outside. It had probably died of age and exhaustion in late autumn and now we were into mid-winter.

The sample was fragile and in a way it was good because we could break it into pieces and study the leg, the wing, and the head, thorax and abdomen more clearly and separately.

We looked at the leg which was serrated and the joints could be seen clearly. We could also see the pointy feet like structures coming out of its tarsus. The wing was transparent but we could see the blood vessel type of appearance. I have not really studied the wing in detail.

The head had huge eyes, similar to the praying mantis. The jaws certainly looked formidable like pinchers. The thorax was squarish in shape and hard to the touch. The abdomen was long and in segments. The female have the cercus and paraproct at the end while the male have cercus clasper and epiproct at the end. Since it was a year ago, I did not check to see if it was male or female, if we do the dragonfly study again, which I am sure we will, I will try and check this out.

I learned that even with 6 legs, the dragonfly doesn't walk very well and is rarely found walking. It is a great flyer though. It can hover in one place, fly extremely fast, and even fly backwards, like the helicopter! They are one of the fastest flying insects in the world flying more than 30 miles per hour.

Dragonflies have four clear life cycle stages. They undergo metamorphosis.  The adult female lays eggs, the egg hatches into the larva or nymph, the adult emerges from the nymph. It spends five years in water and during this time, if anything goes wrong with the ecosystem, the dragonfly is in danger.

After research, we had to make some presentations. Through presentations and discussions, we learned dragonflies live all around the world in warm places and places near water and usually show up in the summer. Sometimes, there are thousands of these insects flying in the evening sky together.

Dragonflies normally do not attack unless you are its prey (which is normally smaller insects like flies gnats and even smaller dragonflies) or it is hurt or you attack or threaten it.

Dragonflies have two compound eyes that have a thousand smaller eyes that see out its prey and its predators. The dragon fly is similar to the praying mantis that it is high up on the food scale and it is a hunter. It creates a basket with its legs and it swoops in and holds the prey with its jaw it usually eats its prey while flying.

It has been around for 300 million years and is an impressive hunter. A prehistoric dragonfly’s wing could be 2½ feet long! So guess how long the actual body would be? I would thing the size of a park bench. I am glad those biiiiiig bugs are not around really.

Pallav sir said that he and his friends used to catch dragonflies when they were young and because they felt threatened, they would gnaw on the fingers!

While some of us were older, there were some smaller children who were as young as 3 who were very fascinated by the dragon fly sample, the artwork that all of us made, the conversations and the fun involved in the learning.