Suborder · Zygoptera

Zygoptera

Damselflies

Damselflies are the slighter of the two odonate suborders: narrow-bodied, weak-flying, and — unlike the dragonflies — able to fold their wings back along the abdomen at rest. Both pairs of wings taper to a stalk at the base, which is what the name records: *zygo-ptera*, yoked wings.

They are creatures of the stream margin. Larvae develop in the water, breathing through three leaf-shaped gills at the tail, and the adults rarely stray far from the bank that produced them. That fidelity makes them useful: a damselfly assemblage reports on the condition of a particular reach of water rather than on the landscape at large, and several of the species here are known from very few streams anywhere.

The specimens documented in this chapter were collected in La Honda and photographed against a plain card, dorsal habitus with a separate close-up of the head, so that eye colour and the pattern of the thoracic stripes — often the only way to separate species of Argia — can be examined directly.