[Odonata-l] Tattered wings

[Kathy &/or Dave Biggs]

Hi Bob and all,

I've noticed that dragonflies seem to be able to compensate even for a 
totally missing wing, but not for tangling parts of wings.
I've even performed 'surgery' on a few that emerged with malformed wings 
at my garden pond ...they seemed doomed to sit and dry and die there, 
but once I had clipped off the mangled part of the wing, they 
immediately flew off! I guess this makes sense with aerodynamics, but it 
amazed me!

Cheers!!
Kathy Biggs

California Dragonflies	       http://www.sonic.net/dragonfly
Southwest Dragonflies		    http://southwestdragonflies.net/
Bigsnest Wildlife Pond	       http://www.bigsnestpond.net/
------------------------------------------------------------------
Kathy and Dave Biggs	         bigsnest at sonic.net      707-823-2911
308 Bloomfield Rd.               Sebastopol, CA  95472 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
dba Azalea Creek Publishing      azalea at sonic.net   fax: 707-823-2911
http://www.sonic.net/~bigsnest/azaleacreekpublishing/ 
-----------------------------------------------------------------



Bob Reimer wrote:

> I was out at one of my favourite oasis in Oman yesterday and noticed 
> what seemed to be an unusual number of dragonflies with very tattered 
> wings.  I'm assuming this indicates that they are old or they had some 
> encounters with other predators that were unsuccessful.  I'm attaching 
> pictures of a male and female /Trithemis annulata /which seemed to be 
> the worst for wear.  The female is missing the tip of each wing while 
> the male seems to be missing most of one hind wing.  Neither seemed 
> overly affected in its ability to fly.  The dragonflies were on a tree 
> beside an aqueduct carrying water between two oases.  If you want to 
> check out the area on Google Earth, the coordinates to fly to are 
> 24.50279N 55.97897E
>  
> Are there any records for how little of a wing can remain before 
> flight is totally impaired?  Is there any strong correlation between 
> tattered wings and age?
>  
> Thanks!!
>  
> Bob Reimer
> Al Ain
> United Arab Emirates
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/rwreimer
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailweb.ups.edu/pipermail/odonata-l/attachments/20070408/dcd105e6/attachment.html