 |
The Poweshiek Skipper Project | |
| Lake Hawthorne ©Rayford
Ratcliff
Introduction Information about the butterfly
O.
poweshiek, Legacy butterfly Legacy
of Chief Poweshiek
H.W. Parker's writings Von Blixum's Heroic Experiment
Iowa's
biological diversity
The Poweshiek Skipper Project Goals
of the project
|
Odonata Iowa's dragonflies and damselflies, order Odonata, are
fairly well studied, at least recently. In fact, there is a great
web site that deals with them, found at www.iowaodes.com.
Dragonflies and damselflies are very watchable insects. They are every bit as entertaining as the butterflies. In addition, they are important predators of other insects, in particular some of the pest species like mosquitoes. In fact, the aquatic larval forms of dragonflies and damselflies are important predators as well. Since mosquito larvae are aquatic organisms as well, they are prey in both stages. Some things are just being learned about dragonflies and damselflies. For example, some are migratory in a manner that is similar to monarch butterflies. The photo on
the right is of a blue dasher, Pachydiplax longipennis. It
has some parasitic mites on its abdomen--the bright red dots. On the left is the Halloween pennant, Celithemis eponia. Both species are fairly common in Iowa. |
The
Iowa list contains 109 species.