Dragonflies

Ms. WeimannThird Grade ages between 7-9 years old

The Stages of a Dragonfly

Stage 1: The Egg Stage

Stage2: The Nymph Stage

Stage 3: The Adult Dragonfly

Stage 1: The Egg Stage• Dragonflies start their life as

eggs. • After breeding, a female

dragonfly selects a likely looking pond or marsh in which to lay her eggs.

• Dragonfly eggs are only laid in still water, as eggs laid in quickly moving will wash into fish-feeding areas.

• Depending on the species, a female can lay hundreds or thousands of eggs during her lifespan.

• In tropical regions dragonfly eggs may hatch in as little as five days. In winter temperatures drop near or below freezing regions, dragonfly eggs usually won't hatch until the following spring.

Stage 2: The Nymph Stage• When dragonflies hatch they are

called nymphs.• Dragonfly nymphs are voracious

predators that have no resemblance to their adult forms.

•Dragonfly nymphs molt (shed their skin) up to 12 times, depending on species, and can spend as long as 4 years as nymphs.•Dragonflies living in tropical regions spend less time in the nymph form while dragonflies living in temperate regions will spend longer as nymphs as the onset of winter delays maturation.

Nymph Stage Continued

• Dragonfly nymphs are aquatic. They live in ponds and marshes until emerging to molt for one final time.

• During the final molting the nymph's skin splits and the nymph emerges as an adult dragonfly.

• Dragonfly nymphs are referred to as hemimetabolous.• This means they don't form a cocoon or pupate before

emerging as an adult.

The Adult Dragonfly Stage• Once the nymph is fully grown,

and the weather is right, it will complete the metamorphosis into a dragonfly by crawling out of the water up the stem of a plant.

The nymph will shed its skin onto the stem of the plant and will then be a young dragonfly. The skin that the nymph left behind is called the EXUVIA and you can find the EXUVIA still stuck to the stem for a long time after the dragonfly has left it.

Adult Dragonfly Stage Continued• Once the dragonfly leaves

the exuvia it is a full grown dragonfly. The dragonfly will hunt for food and begin to look for a mate.

• Once the dragonfly finds a mate, the female will find a body of calm water that will be a good place to lay her eggs, and the life cycle of the dragonfly begins all over again.

• Adult dragonflies only live about two months.

What Do Dragonflies Eat?

Similarly, they also feed on ants, termites, butterflies, gnats, bees and other insects and tend to hunt in groups when large colonies of ants or termites are spotted.

As Nymphs, the dragonflies eat mosquito larvae, other aquatic insects and worms, and for a little variety even small aquatic vertebrates like tadpoles and small fish.

The adult dragonfly uses the basket formed by its legs to catch insects while flying. The adult dragonfly likes to eat gnats, mayflies, flies, mosquitoes and other small flying insects. They sometimes eat butterflies, moths and bees too.

Adult Dragonflies are born rulers of their domain and they prove it to just about every insect that thinks it can pull a fast one on this killing machine.

Extra Cool Facts!• Adult dragonflies eat just about anything that is edible

and can be caught. They are a treasure for humanity because they keep mosquito populations under strict control by feasting on them when they are in abundance.

• A dragonfly can eat food equal to its own weight in about 30 minutes. Which roughly translates into a you trying to eat as much as 100 lb…let alone in half an hour.  We don’t eat that amount of food in a week!

•To give you a little insight, the dragonfly that is many times the size of a mosquito or a housefly needs to flap its wings a mere 30 times a minute when compared to a mosquito’s 600 times a minute and the housefly’s 1000 flaps a minute requirement to keep them flying and in peak maneuverability.

•Such is the power that the dragonfly is equipped with and given its low-energy speed capability, very, very few insects can escape its basket shaped grabbing limbs that it uses to clutch on to its prey before crushing the critter into a gooey mass, with its powerful mandibles and swallowing it

Dragonfly Life-Cycle Video

• Life Cycle Video