Amy Janik has a passion for winged creatures, which is how her professional career shifted from birds to insects in the order Odonata—dragonflies and damselflies. In this episode, we go deep into their world. After Amy describes how she got interested in dragonflies and damselflies, she offers a few tips about how to tell them apart, describes the species native to the Midwest near the Mississippi River, what they like to eat, and their life cycles. Based on her experiences in the field researching dragonflies and damselflies, she suggests a few places that offer especially good viewing opportunities. It’s everything you ever wanted to know about dragonflies and damselflies—and then some!
Show Notes
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Transcript
Tue, Aug 27, 2024 7:41PM • 43:16
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
dragonflies, species, wetlands, wings, vegetation, fly, streams, water, people, nymphs, adults, mississippi, river, focusing, area, skimmers, illinois, super, body, underwater
SPEAKERS
Amy Janik, Dean Klinkenberg
Amy Janik 00:00
Their bodies are just super cool, especially dragonflies. They they have their abdomens that function as like digestion, things like that. But that’s also how they breathe. So they actually breathe through their rectum, and then by sucking up that water, they can kind of create a jet propulsion that then shoots them forward to avoid predators and things like that. So I find that really fascinating.
Dean Klinkenberg 00:44
Welcome to the Mississippi Valley Traveler Podcast. I’m Dean Klinkenberg, and I’ve been exploring the deep history and rich culture of the people and places along America’s greatest river, the Mississippi, since 2007 join me as I go deep into the characters and places along the river, and occasionally wander into other stories from the Midwest and other rivers. Read the episode show notes and get more information on the Mississippi at MississippiValleyTraveler.com Let’s get going. Welcome to Episode 47 of the Mississippi Valley Traveler podcast. Well, we’re back after an unplanned break, but between vacation, getting sick and having some technical issues, I just couldn’t get an episode out here a couple weeks ago, so I’m popping out a new one today, and I’m very excited to have Amy Janik on the podcast this episode to talk about dragonflies and damselflies. She’s been working with them in the field as a researcher at National Great Rivers Research and Education Center for a while, and has a lot to say about them. So in this interview, we talk about how she got interested in them in the first place. A few tips to tell how to distinguish damselflies from dragonflies. An overview of some of the species you’re most likely to find in our part of the country, in the Midwest, along the Mississippi, what they like to eat, which apparently includes each other. But it’s not just that they eat some insects that will make you cheer as well. We talked about their life cycle. It’s remarkable that they spend most of their lives actually in the water. And then we have a few viewing tips near the end and offer suggestions on a couple places you might be able to go if you’re in the in the region around St Louis, places you could go to spot them. As usual some of the things that come up during this podcast, the parks and a couple pictures I think of the species we we talk about will will be in the show notes. So go to MississippiValleyTraveler.com/podcast. You’ll find the show notes there, and you can also go there and click on an episode and leave a comment if you so desire. Thanks to everybody who has shown me some love through Patreon. As always, I’m deeply grateful for your support, and you not only make me feel good, you keep this podcast going. If you don’t really like the Patreon thing, then you can buy me a coffee. So again, you can go to MississippiValleyTraveler.com/podcast and from there, you can find out how to join the Patreon community for as little as $1 or just buy me a coffee. And now let’s get on with the interview. Amy Janik is a research specialist at the National Great Rivers Research and Education Center or NGRREC. Who is co-principal investigator on the Illinois Department of Natural Resources Odonate Project. She directs and manages all field work and collection pertaining to odonate pertaining to the odonate project, as well as develops field protocols and confirms identities of adult and larval odonates. Prior to NGRREC, Amy worked on various avian ecology projects focusing on the hybridization of blue winged and golden winged warblers cooperative breeding of brown headed nuthatches and avian exposure to insecticides. She has a BS in conservation biology and Spanish from the University of Wisconsin Madison, and an MS degree in biological sciences from Western Michigan University. Welcome to the podcast, Amy.
Amy Janik 04:34
Thank you. Excited to be here.
Dean Klinkenberg 04:37
So Odonata is the order that includes dragonflies and damselflies. Correct.
Amy Janik 04:42
Yes, correct.
Dean Klinkenberg 04:43
Do they have any cousins in that order as well, or is it just them?
Amy Janik 04:47
So they have the sub order that it would be how they get split up. So you have Anisoptera, which is the dragonflies, you have Zygoptera, which is the damselflies, and then the kind of prehistoric relatives is the, I’m not sure if I’m pronouncing it correctly, but it’s the Ansiozygoptera. So there’s only three current day species of those. They live in Asia, but those were the ones that were mostly around during the Jurassic period. But we are they still, are still present till today. So that’s the only sub orders that make up that Odonata.
Dean Klinkenberg 05:22
All right, so how did you get interested in Odonata?
Amy Janik 05:26
That’s a great question. So I definitely like things that fly, as I’ve been studying birds mostly. I lived in Texas briefly, and I have to be honest that during kind of like recreational walks and things like that. Texas has some really beautiful dragonflies that are bright pink. They have the roseate skimmer, they have the flame skimmer that’s like a bright orange. And they were just really fascinating to me. I had always grown up in the Chicago suburb scene, you know, the typical common green darners and jewel wings and things like that. But there’s just something about these, like hot pink and bright orange ones, that got me at the that got me excited. And I saw this job opening up in NGRREC, and I was kind of looking to more focus on conservation, rather than just a specific species. In this project, who I work with, Dr John Crawford. He’s also a co-principal investigator at NGRREC. They were starting a project with IDNR focusing on how we can better protect dragonflies and damselflies in the state of Illinois. And to do that, we needed to kind of get a status assessment of who’s here in the state, what habitats they’re using. And I got offered the position, and I was very excited, and they’ve kind of become a new passion for me, and I’ve been able to use a lot of similar skills that I had with doing bird research. I use binoculars to ID them, spotting scopes, things like that. You have to be able to ID them on the wing, which helps with birds. They have a lot of similar behaviors as birds, the way that they hunt things like that, and forage. So they’ve just, they’ve definitely grown on me. And they’re absolutely wonderful creatures, and they’re just beautiful.
Dean Klinkenberg 07:04
They are incredible. The variety of the colors and the patterns on the wings and on the bodies is really remarkable. Maybe we’ll get into that in just a little bit, too. So let’s kind of do a couple of basic things, like, what? How do you distinguish between a dragonfly and a damselfly?
Amy Janik 07:18
Yeah, so the dragonflies are going to be your like, robust insect that you usually see flying over you. They have eyes that are very close to each other. They have big wings that, when they land, are usually held at, like a perpendicular, open kind of state. And then we have the damsel flies, that are going to be much more slender. They’re going to be less flying around over your head, more flying, kind of within vegetation. Their eyes and their head is a bit of a rectangle, and then their eyes are kind of spread apart at the end, and they are going to usually have when they land, their wings are going to close. There’s a few that kind of keep them spread open a little bit, but that’s one of my biggest things. Of my biggest things, is kind of looking at their wing position and just how different their body size is. You know, dragonflies are going to be sturdy, and the damsel flies are pretty slender. They’re they look fragile, but they’re not always that fragile,
Dean Klinkenberg 08:16
Right? So how many different species are there of each of them?
Amy Janik 08:22
So I’m not sure about worldwide. Worldwide, there’s about 6000 total in the world. I’m not sure about distinctly, but I do know for Illinois, since that’s the state I’m studying, we have about just under 50 damselflies in Illinois, and then just over 100 dragonflies in the state.
Dean Klinkenberg 08:45
Wow.
Amy Janik 08:45
There’s quite a bit of diversity.
Dean Klinkenberg 08:47
That is amazing. Yeah, I want to get into some of the local ones a little more detail in just a minute, but let’s kind of, I’m thinking again, kind of the big picture here. They’ve been around a long time. I think, right? Dragonflies, damselflies, is a very old order. They go back 300 million years or so, maybe.
Amy Janik 09:08
Yeah, 250 million years. Yeah, they outlived the dinosaurs. So that’s pretty cool. But yeah, they we have, of course, those really large dragonflies. Their relatives are not quite related to our present day, but they have a lot of similar characteristics, although they have wingspans of like two feet compared to the ones we have now. But their fossils are relatively hard to find. Mostly their wings are what is found, and then the rest of their body is hard. So we’re not exactly sure kind of how their morphology was made up in their anatomy, but there’s a lot of ideas that they probably function similar to skimmers or darners of current day, you know, too big to probably be in the forest, so they’re probably surveying open wetlands. So. Um, probably functioning similar to, like a large bird of prey, you know, focusing on other insects, things like that, maybe not super agile, but still able to kind of forage throughout the open wetlands.
Dean Klinkenberg 10:14
Yeah, it’s kind of mind boggling to imagine, like wandering around wetlands, and here comes an insect with two and a half foot wingspan.
Amy Janik 10:22
Yes, yeah. I think they’re recorded as, like, the largest insect that we could have possibly had. And, you know, I’ve handled and worked with the current day dragonflies, and have occasionally gotten a little chomp from one, and you know, that hurts, and so I can’t imagine what one of those would have been like.
Dean Klinkenberg 10:41
So what are, what are the like, the most prolific or most common species of dragonflies?
Amy Janik 10:49
So speaking, kind of in the Midwest. So that’s kind of my focus. You’re gonna have the skimmers. That’s our largest family of odonates for dragonflies. That’s gonna include your widow skimmer, your common white tail. You’re going to also include your eastern pondhawk, which is very common. You see the females a lot. They’re green. They blend in a lot with the surroundings. Darners are another big popular group. That’s the common green darner. I think a lot of people see them, especially starting to come up. I’ll be forming swarms in the fall, so we’ll see a lot of those. And they’re pretty big, so they’re hard to miss. In terms of damselflies, year round, we almost always have the forktails. So those are probably one of the smallest ones. You’re going to see those on edges of wetlands, edges of streams, usually around your legs, swimming or flying through vegetation. And then you always have kind of one thing when you’re on the river and stuff. I always see the broad-winged damselflies. So that’s going to be your ebony jewelwings, your American rubspots, really noticeable. Dark black wings for the jewelwing with a really pretty iridescent green body, and then the rubyspots almost kind of have, like a hot pink spot on their wings, but they spend a lot of time kind of following a stream or a river, landing on the edges of vegetation. Will be big groups of them sometimes. So those ones are hard to miss.
Dean Klinkenberg 12:21
So for folks who are interested in getting better at identifying these very species, like, do you have like, a resource you could recommend that people can go to?
Amy Janik 12:29
So there’s actually Odonata Central (editor note: www.odonatacentral.org). It’s kind of similar to, like, an eBird for you can kind of keep track of the things that you’re seeing, but also just there are tons of guidebooks. There’s “The Dragonflies and Damselflies of the East,” I believe that’s by Paulson. And then so any of the guidebooks, they’re very similar to the bird books. And it kind of just, what’s really nice about dragonflies is you could probably sit at a certain area with a spotting scope or just your binoculars, and kind of watch things they have. Each kind of family has a different behavior. So you know, you have the fly or the skimmers that are constantly flying over a wetland, but then you also have perchers that will function similar to like a fly catcher, where they’ll sit and wait and they’ll do a little loop around to catch their prey and then come back to the same perch to eat it. So getting to know their behaviors and their body shapes in the air is the best for kind of being able to identify what group they belong to. But there’s some guidebooks, and just kind of getting out there and looking at things and noticing the different colors is the best way to do it. And kind of getting to know those most common ones that stick around all year will definitely help, and then you can kind of figure out if you’re seeing something different or weird.
Dean Klinkenberg 13:46
Alright, yeah, I didn’t realize this until recently. I’ve been trying to get pictures occasionally of dragonflies and damselflies, and I got very excited that I thought I had found two different species. And then when I started doing some research online, I think it was just males and females of the east, maybe an eastern pondhawk.
Amy Janik 14:04
Yeah, the the females are…A lot of people. I they blend in really well, but they’re actually very noticeable that they have that green. A lot of people will assume that that’s the male, but then the male is actually kind of like a dusky blue. And they’re they’re gorgeous, but yeah, so they have some sexual dimorphism, similar to how birds will do as well. You know, the females want to be more camouflaged than the males,
Dean Klinkenberg 14:29
So they’re they’re not as appetizing to predators, I suppose, in that way.
Amy Janik 14:34
Exactly.
Dean Klinkenberg 14:36
All right, let’s talk a little bit about what they like to eat. Because, I mean, that’s apart from the fact that they’re beautiful, like we should, we should love dragonflies and damselflies for their diet, if nothing else, right?
Amy Janik 14:48
Yeah, so, you know, they are insectivores in water when they live in the aquatic, terrestrial habitats, and as adults, so they’ll eat mosquito larva and different type of biting fly larva in the water, which is great. And then, as adults, they’ll eat mosquito swarm. They’ll focus on mosquito swarms and then biting fly swarms as well. But they also have, basically, they’ll eat whatever that can fit in their mouth. They aren’t super picky. They when they’re larva, they actually can eat fish. They can eat tadpoles. They’re very skilled hunters. And then, as adults, there’s records that they’ll eat each other pretty often. There’s a few species that will go after butterflies and moths. So on the air, they’re usually focusing on the small insects, you know, leaf hoppers, anything flying around. If they go for something really large, they’ll grab it and bring it to the ground and usually try and eat it down there. We have some of the really big ones that can even go after hummingbirds. So they are, they’re pretty adventurous, and they do eat each other a lot as well. So yeah, they’re but it’s one of the best things, is pest control, and I think that should be an easy enough reason to love them. You know, I always try to remind people, like, don’t run away from them. They’re just trying to help you. They want to eat the biting flies. They want to eat the mosquitoes that are surrounding them.
Dean Klinkenberg 16:27
Is there much difference in what they eat by species? Or do they do all species tend to have similar diets? Or is there some specialization?
Amy Janik 16:36
There’s not much specialization. So in the water when they’re larva, it kind of is based off of where they hide out. And so we have, like, the darners that are really good swimmers, and they can kind of focus better on, you know, sneaking up on fish, things like that. They’re also larger. But then we have a lot of them, damselflies included, that will cling to kind of detritus or roots that are under the water. So they hide a lot, and then if they kind of anything gets near them, they’ll just snap at it. So they aren’t too picky. It’s just kind of whatever happens to come into the area that they are stationed out. And kind of same with adults. I think damsel flies will focus more on whatever is hanging out in the vegetation, because they don’t usually go up too high. But just the other week, my field technician and I were out sampling and she saw a damselfly eating another damselfly. I’m pretty sure it was a female eating a male of the same species. So they aren’t too picky.
Dean Klinkenberg 17:40
Alright. Yeah, I was trying to remember that, I think, when I was researching a book a couple of years ago and going a little deeper into dragonflies and damsels, damselflies, I came across a note that there you might see different species of Odonata at different heights above water, and that was maybe because they were trying to go after different kinds of prey. But is there anything to that, or am I misremembering?
Amy Janik 18:07
Not to my knowledge, my guess would be just based off of their anatomy. So some of them, their wings, are a function to be a little bit better gliders or hovers, and so the ones up higher are going to be able to glide. They’re not going to get thrown away by the high wind speeds. Um, damselflies usually hang out low because they can’t handle those high wind speeds, um, and so, you know, I don’t think they’re particularly focusing on a different um, like prey at those different levels. I think it’s just kind of whatever happens to be in the area.
Dean Klinkenberg 18:38
So take us through the life cycle of dragonflies and damselflies.
Amy Janik 18:45
Yeah, there’s really neat where they have these stages of their life cycle, where they inhabit water and so aquatic lifestyle, the life cycle part, and then they have a terrestrial part of their life cycle. I think one of my favorite things to tell people is that they actually spend most of their life underwater, and that’s probably the least amount that people have seen or witnessed before. Their nymphs are really cool looking. They vary a lot, and they’re they function like really importantly, they’re very key to both their aquatic lifestyle and their terrestrial lifestyle, key predators, usually. And so they’ll live in both wetlands, so like a still water environment, or streams, where they have moving, flowing water rivers, things like that. They also use, you know, sometimes they’ll just use vernal pools, so things that dry up really fast, emergent wetlands. Some of them are adapted to, you know, they get laid as eggs, and then within a few weeks, they quickly develop into a nymph, and then will then emerge as an adult. So that way that they can accommodate the whole fact that their wetland is going to dry up in a few weeks. But ten we have some species that will go for four years or even more years underwater, molting pretty slowly, maybe once or twice a year, and then will eventually emerge as an adult. So it kind of varies depending on the species, depending on the temperatures of the waters. When it’s warmer, they usually develop faster than when it’s cooler.
Dean Klinkenberg 20:23
Hey, Dean Klinkenberg here, interrupting myself. Just wanted to remind you that if you’d like to know more about the Mississippi River, check out my books. I write the Mississippi Valley Traveler guide books for people who want to get to know the Mississippi better. I also write the Frank Dodge mystery series that is set in places along the Mississippi. My newest book “The Wild Mississippi” goes deep into the world of Old Man River. Learn about the varied and complex ecosystem supported by the Mississippi, the plant and animal life that depends on them. And where you can go to experience it all. Find any of these wherever books are sold.
Amy Janik 21:03
Yeah. So they spend most of their life underwater. They their body shapes, both damselflies and dragonflies are wildly different. Damselflies are very slender. They have these kind of leaf like appendages, appendages at the end of their abdomen that are their gills. So that’s how they breathe. Dragonflies can vary from like long and chunky a couple inches. Those are the darners. And then we have some that are really flat, that like to get really hairy, so they collect all the detritus to hide. And then you have some that just cling on to things and wait for something to come by. So their body shapes are representative of how they feed underwater in the different micro habitats, and they their bodies are just super cool, especially dragonflies. They they have their abdomens that function as like digestion, things like that. But that’s also how they breathe. So they actually breathe through their rectum, and then by sucking up that water, they can kind of create a jet propulsion that then shoots them forward to avoid predators and things like that. So I find that really fascinating. And they’re just they have really cool mouth parts as well under underwater, that’s actually one of the main ways that I can identify them in the lab, by looking at their mouths. They kind of form like a spoon, so they can, like, propel out like a catapult and then grab food and bring it back in. And they’ll have a bunch of little claws and teeth that they’ll call them to kind of hold into the food. Some will be spoon shaped. Some will be like a flat that kind of just pierces and then damselflies, a couple of the spread wings have a mouth part that is almost the same length as their body to reach out and grab really far away things without having to expose themselves. So that’s pretty cool. But yeah, so they function. You know, water quality is really important to their habitat, and you know, if they’re going to be living underwater for a while, you know, droughts are really big deals. Sometimes they can’t handle sometimes the species aren’t ready for a drought, and then they aren’t ever able to emerge. They dragonflies and damselflies are relatively tolerant to pollution, but they’re still good indicators of kind of the diversity that we have in a water they really help kind of the ecosystem and the community that they that we have. But they still are sensitive. So, you know, it’s important to keep the waters clean for them. If things get too turbid, then they aren’t able to see what they’re hunting and things like that. If it gets flooded, then they kind of get carried away with a stream. And then, yeah, so that’s kind of their aquatic lifestyle, and then so unlike like butterflies who go into like that caterpillar cocoon stage, dragonflies will stay kind of as a nymph, while their adult body is kind of developing inside them, will continue to be active things like that. Their wings will start to develop more. Will start to develop the adult mouth parts, and then we’ll be able to kind of breathe both underwater and above water. And that’s when they eventually crawl out to a piece of vegetation, a rock, something like that. And that’s when they emerge from their larval skin, as they call it, or like an exoskeleton, an exuviae. It’s very similar to all cicadas are. I know we see those a lot, where they emerge from that skin, so they do the same thing. And it’s pretty easy to actually, during a certain time of the year, walk through a wetland and find a bunch of the exuviae a stock two vegetation. And it’s really cool, especially the darners are pretty big, so that’s always fun. And then once they get to that stage, and they emerge from that they’re actually, they’re called tenerals. At that point, they’re they haven’t quite hardened yet, and they aren’t very good flyers. So they usually kind of try to find, like, another piece of vegetation that they can dry out on for about 24 hours. That’s when they’rethe most susceptible to other predators, especially birds and lizards and frogs and things like that. But once they get to that hardened stage, they can go off and start feeding right away, and are pretty good flyers at that point.
Dean Klinkenberg 25:17
Wow. So how? How long is their life once they hit the adult stage?
Amy Janik 25:20
Anywhere for a few weeks to a couple months.
Dean Klinkenberg 25:24
That’s really cool. So all of them, pretty much all species of Odonata, require water early development.
Amy Janik 25:34
Yep. Yeah, so eggs are usually laid in water. Some of the damselflies will actually lay in aquatic vegetation. They can, like, pierce a stem and use that, but it’s usually still near water, so that when they become nymphs, they have water access. There’s very few species that can when their nymphs can, kind of breathe underwater and above water, and they’ll use it to kind of crawl around, eat spiders and beetles and go back in the water, but with the majority of them all, they need that water to live and develop as larval nymphs.
Dean Klinkenberg 26:08
So they’re remarkably adapted to different environments too, right? Because they live in Canada, right? There are dragonflies in Canada. There are dragonflies in Louisiana. So how do they adapt to those different temperature conditions? Or, you know, the longer winters, or do the Odonata up north just spend more time in the mud, under, under the ice?
Amy Janik 26:32
So almost no, I don’t know of any dragonfly adults or damselfly adults that overwinter. They pretty much, if they’re still around when it starts to when you get a quick freeze or something, they’re most likely going to die. They can, kind of, like, shut down, and then when it warms up, come back. But that’s not super likely, but they will overwinter as nymphs. And so if something freezes, you know, there’s still water underneath, for the most part, that they’re able to kind of shut down their metabolism and things like that, and kind of hunker down for the winter until, you know, things start moving again. So that’s really impressive. There’s the heinz emerald that will actually so they are endangered in the state of Illinois and probably in Missouri as well, but most of the Midwest they are, and they are the ones that actually will share crayfish burrows, which crayfish are one of their predators as well, but they may be why they’re endangered, but, but it’s a pretty cool kind of relationship that, you know, if it starts to get a drought or something like that, they can move into a crayfish burrow and, you know, kind of find their way, you know, living in there. So they’re adapted to that. But for the most part, you know, they can overwinter in the water, but they will not overwinter as adults. And it is kind of just based off of, you know, temperature and their body colors. And so as adults, you know, the really dark ones are probably more up north, where they can absorb the sunlight, kind of in this area, when it gets really sunny, they have different colors, and they actually will obelesk, which is where they point their abdomen, north or upward, so that way the direct UV lights aren’t hitting their body. They utilize forests a lot, actually, if it gets too hot, they’ll go so that way they don’t get desiccated in a wetland or anything like that. They use that for protection, a way to rest during rains and storms. They are pretty sturdy, and they’ve learned how to really utilize that vegetation. It’s amazing when it rains, you know, I barely see them. There’s a few that will like to go out and hunt when it’s raining, but the most part, they hunker down and you can’t find them. And then as soon as it stops, they all appear.
Dean Klinkenberg 28:42
I guess I had in my head, like for a long time, that they would only be around wetlands as adults, but lately, I’ve been noticing dragonflies far away from any body of water, so they will move after their nymph stage when they become adults, they will be quite mobile and get they don’t necessarily have to be next to water as adults.
Amy Janik 29:06
So they a lot of females will feed away from water, because they kind of get harassed by males if they’re too close. So they go and feed, kind of over grasslands in the forest, you know, a park that’s nearby a parking lot, even. But yeah, they don’t. They. They go to the water to breed. And so if it’s like, right when they’re mating, or something like that, they’re usually mating around water. Some will lay their eggs while they’re still attached to each other. Some, there’s males that will actually guard the female while she oviposits into the water. So the water is a big area for like their breeding ground, and males tend to hang out there to kind of set up their little territories. But you will definitely see them moving all around wherever they can find food.
Dean Klinkenberg 29:54
So let’s get into a couple of the remarkable skills. Let’s tell me about their vision, like they. They have, we talk about eagle eyes, we probably should talk about dragonfly eyes, though, right?
Amy Janik 30:06
Yeah, they’re super impressive. So they have, you know, their compound eyes that you can see, but then within those compound eyes, they have probably 30,000 simple eyes that can kind of function independently and move around. They are incredibly good visually. You know, especially someone who has been chasing after them with a net. They are very impressive. They can turn their heads about 170 degrees. And so they really don’t have a blind spot, which I found out. They can also tilt their head, I think, about 90 degrees upward and downward, so they can see everything, any type of movement, like, you know, even when they’re perched, you think you might be able to sneak up behind them, but you can’t. But so they’re, yeah, their eyes are just absolutely amazing. And I know they’re something that I haven’t looked into it a ton, but I know people are studying them to see what we can learn from them and how they function so independently from each other.
Dean Klinkenberg 31:06
So something like what I read like, something like 80% of their brain cells are devoted to vision. Does that sound about right?
Amy Janik 31:12
I believe so, yeah, they actually that they can’t hear. There’s no evidence that they can hear, at least, they don’t really make noise. They don’t use that at all, but it’s, I think majority of their senses that they’re going to use is going to be vision.
Dean Klinkenberg 31:25
So that they rely entirely on vision then when they’re hunting.
Amy Janik 31:28
Yeah.
Dean Klinkenberg 31:30
Wow. So the other thing they do remarkably well then, is flying.
Amy Janik 31:35
Yeah, yes.
Dean Klinkenberg 31:36
Tell us about their their flight abilities.
Amy Janik 31:38
Yeah. The wings are also very cool that they can function independently as well. So each wing can kind of, you know, fly the direction that it needs to, to help it be so agile. They have these, especially for dragonflies, they have this really broad hind wing, and then they have the a little bit smaller of a forewing that’s in front. They’re made up of these veins, I’m sure people have noticed, and there’s kind of a membrane that covers that that makes them super flexible. They’re able to bend, they’re able to turn quickly, things like that. They can adjust really well. And just their their bodies in general, are made to be super quick. Their abdomens can kind of function as like a rudder to help with directions. The more broad winged dragonflies are going to be, the ones that you can see hovering above a high wetland. And then you have damselflies, who may look a little bit more fragile and things like that, but they actually one of the things that they do is they’ll fly up northward, if they want to, like, migrate or disperse a little bit. They’ll use winds. They’ll fly straight up use a strong wind to push them. So that’s pretty smart, but they can kind of, they’re made a lot better to function in that high vegetation area with those kind of sleek wings that are pulled back a little bit more. So they’re able to maneuver a lot better through that high vegetation areas.
Dean Klinkenberg 33:00
So it’s late August, as we’re recording now. Like, if we were to go out to some areas, around some wetlands, or looking around for dragonflies. Like, what are some of the species of dragonflies and damselflies we’d see out there right now through September?
Amy Janik 33:14
Yeah, so you’re gonna have those common green darners, they’re still gonna be around one of the things that they kind of uses their flight season, starting right now, is going to be meadow hawks the kind of the end of summer, they’ll be around for a few weeks. Those are really cool. They’re hard to distinguish between and species, but they’re usually as a group they’re like a reddish, medium sized dragonfly that flies around a wetland. They’re really pretty. Damsel flies. You’re still going to see your fork tails. We’re going to start to get some more dancers that are around, and bluets are still going to be around. Jewel wings are probably going to start to be done around September, and things like that. But for the most part, the we’re still kind of in a good peak season for a lot of species. You know, we have a few that are rolling around for maybe April and May, but June, July, August is one of the biggest times that you can still see a lot of things. And so I would say, especially with these temperatures still being pretty warm, you’re going to still see quite a few pond hawks, widow skimmers, eastern amber wings, which are the tiniest ones we have in North America. Very cute. Those should still be out kind of around wetlands and things like that. We have club tales that will probably still be around. Those going to be focusing on our streams and rivers and things like that. Still got a lot of good species out there right now.
Dean Klinkenberg 34:41
So if people wanted to go someplace that had a decent variety of species, do you have a couple of recommendations where they might go? The types of habitats they might go to, or specific places?
Amy Janik 34:53
Yeah. So for diversity, I would say wetlands. And for easy like visual seeing. The wetlands are always going to be the best they you know, the males are always constantly doing a territory of the fence, flying after each other, chasing each other. Streams are a little bit trickier, because it’s the type of species that hang out in streams kind of have a restricted route that they use to kind of forage. And so you’ll see them fly by, and then they’re gone, and then they’ll let me come back 20 minutes later, or they go perch in a tree. So streams are rough. Those are they’re definitely there, but they’re not as easy to spot. Wetlands are definitely the best spots right now, a good pond, man made or not natural, you know, they’ll be there. You know, I was just, I think I was on the Meramec River a couple weeks ago on a canoe. They love canoes and kayaks, and so they’ll land, well damselflies will land on the kayak with you. That’s a good way to see them. It kind of if you’re not creeping up on them, they aren’t really threatened at all. So that’s always fun to do, but yeah, wetlands would be the best spot. Even open grasslands at this time of the year, you’ll have a lot more diversity.
Dean Klinkenberg 36:13
I know there’s a good collection of wetlands around the confluence of the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers, especially if you go up like Highway 100 along that stretch, there are several Illinois DNR properties up there. Those would probably be pretty good spots to go I would think to spot some.
Amy Janik 36:29
Yeah. So I am doing some local sites, and we’re over in Alton, Illinois. And so some of the areas, the wetlands that I’ve gone to, you know those Pere Marquette. They have a couple wetland areas. I’ve heard good things about Beaver Dam as well, state park. Where else have we gone? Arlington Wetlands, which is a Heartlands Conservancy property, is a really popular spot. They have a boardwalk that you can walk through. What other sites have I’ve actually been doing a lot of sites on the SIUE campus. So they have a pond kind of near their cross country spot, and that’s pretty popular. There’s a hiking and mountain biking trail right next to it that you can go to. There’s a stream right by their bike path that occasionally I’ll see some. And so they’re, they’re all kind of, you know, closer than you think.
Dean Klinkenberg 37:28
Right. So you were in the field quite a bit this summer. What was your recent, what were you researching? What projects were you working on?
Amy Janik 37:35
Yeah, so the work that I’m doing, we are basically trying to create distribution kind of maps and get a better idea of what where species are throughout the state of Illinois. And so since last year, I go out in these kind of four week chunks where I start in the most southern part of Illinois and work my way north each week, where I have a handful of sites, about six sites per area, that I visit about three times in a week. And so the idea that is, I want to get a really good sample size of what species are utilizing a certain site. And you know, if a state, state park supervisors or a landowner, or any of the like nonprofits that I go to, I’m also working with, like Peoria Park District, if they’re ever interested in studying a certain species. The idea is that I can kind of create a occupancy detection model for them to let them know the best times to do that research for that specific species. So for example, we have, like, a blue corporal, really likes the early spring, really likes wetlands, likes to be in Southern Illinois. You know, if you want to specifically find that, I can kind of give you a guideline of when to best survey for that, what kind of temperatures they like to utilize, what time of day, hopefully. And so I collect all this information when I’m out there. I’m also trying to figure out the best sampling scheme to find that’s more useful for people. So I go out there and I do aquatic surveys for nymphs. I do aerial surveys, which means I run around with a butterfly net trying to catch them. And then I’ll also do a visual survey, where I’m using my binoculars, and I record what species I find during each survey. And then I also have a field technician that will collect any environmental data. So we do water temperature, conductivity, flow rate in streams, the air temperature, humidity, just anything, any type of invasive species that might be around the canopy cover, if there’s fish, just things that might influence whether or not a species might be there. And so some species probably don’t care about those things, but we do have some that are more particular to like fishless wetlands or really shady areas and things like that. And so I’m collecting that information, and I’m able to kind of create a model that will hopefully be able to predict, you know, when the best time, when the best habitat, best weather, temperature. Things like that when to find a certain species. And it’s also just going to give us a really good idea of when certain species hang out throughout the state of Illinois. You know, if they’re utilizing these wetlands and streams during a certain time of the year, we can adjust that for when our surveys are and so that’s what I’m doing right now. I’m kind of focusing on that really heavy sampling, hopefully save people time by being like, hey, it’s not super worth it to do an aerial that survey. They’re too fast. You can’t catch them. Just do a visual and do an aquatic. I think a lot of people skip aquatic, but it’s one of the most important, because that means that they are breeding there. If we know that they’re breeding there, then that’s really important water, that we should be protecting things like that. So I’m still in that stage. I have one more round, and then that’ll be the end of this grant, and I’ll be working on kind of the write up and the report and the suggestions that I’ll have for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.
Dean Klinkenberg 40:57
Well, fantastic. So if people want to follow your work or what you’re up to, is there a place where they can do that?
Amy Janik 41:05
Usually the NGRREC website. We are currently updating that, so that’s not the best place right now, but hopefully in time, once the IDNR approves the report that we write, it should be available to the public. But also my goal, once I’m done with that report, is to start publishing, and so hopefully those will be out and hopefully accessible to the public and things like that. We do a lot of news releases from NGRREC, always just following, you know, NGRREC’s Instagram or their Facebook. We usually post pretty regular updates on our research here.
Dean Klinkenberg 41:41
Great. I can post links to NGRREC’s social media sites on my on the show notes for this podcast, and then when you have the final report done for IDNR, shoot me a note, and I’ll send it out to folks too. So I’ll post a link to that as well.
Amy Janik 41:59
That’d be great.
Dean Klinkenberg 42:00
Amy, thank you so much for your time and for your passion for dragonflies and damselflies. Deeply appreciate it. We need more people doing work like this. Thanks for your time.
Amy Janik 42:12
Well, thank you so much. That was great.
Dean Klinkenberg 42:15
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the series on your favorite podcast app, so you don’t miss out on future episodes. I offer the podcast for free, but when you support the show with a few bucks through Patreon to help keep the program going, just go to patreon.com/deanklinkenberg. If you want to know more about the Mississippi River, check out my books. I write the Mississippi Valley Traveler guidebooks for people who want to get to know the Mississippi better. I also write the Frank Dodge mystery series that’s set in places along the river. Find them wherever books are sold. The Mississippi Valley Traveler podcast is written and produced by me, Dean Klinkenberg. Original Music by Noah Fence. See you next time you.
