[Odonata-l] Tattered wings

[O'Brien, Mark]

Many years ago when I worked on sphecid wasps, I used wing fray as a
relative measure of the age of the female wasps.  It's in one of my
papers on Podalonia luctuosa or Liris argentata.  I wasn't the first to
use it though, as I know there were several other papers that dealt with
it.  

 

Mark

 

Mark F. O'Brien, Collections Manager

Insect Division, Museum of Zoology

University of Michigan

(734)647-2199

 

________________________________

From: odonata-l-bounces at listhost.ups.edu
[mailto:odonata-l-bounces at listhost.ups.edu] On Behalf Of Nick and Ailsa
Donnelly
Sent: Monday, April 09, 2007 11:32 PM
To: 'Bob Reimer'; odonata-l at listhost.ups.edu
Subject: Re: [Odonata-l] Tattered wings

 

Tattered wings are very interesting.  Needham once purposely snipped
bits of wing off a libellulid (I forget which one) to see how far he
could snip it and still have the insect fly.  He got nearly to the
nodus, if I recall.  I did the same thing once with Pachydiplax and got
the same results.  Except Needham added a twist - he put a fine line of
glue along the hind edge of the wing.  This utterly stopped them, and he
posited that they could not flex the wing between the plus and minus
veins.  (He had pointed out that odonate wings are not flat, which was
an important discovery) This is an interesting idea, but I do not think
the experiment was well designed.

 

I have noticed that extremely territorial, large libellulids fight so
much that their wings become seriously reduced in size.  I have seen
Libellula comanche with little left behind the costa and radial spaces,
and still flying.

 

In Guatemala I once saw ahead of me on a forest path a  long neuropterid
flying in a very clumsy manner.  Upon netting it I found it was an
Archilestes grandis with little left of any wing beyond the nodus.  It
was still flying, but not gracefully!

 

________________________________

From: odonata-l-bounces at listhost.ups.edu
[mailto:odonata-l-bounces at listhost.ups.edu] On Behalf Of Bob Reimer
Sent: Sunday, April 08, 2007 12:30 PM
To: odonata-l at listhost.ups.edu
Subject: [Odonata-l] Tattered wings

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/20070410/ee4c9504/attachment.html