Damsel

Damsel

Agriocnemis femina femina - male.

This small damsel would likely go unnoticed if I weren't looking at my feet, checking for snakes when I move. Rarely found more that a foot or two from ground level, it flies from one stalk to another with such elegance and precision. It never flies very far and only takes to the air to pluck a small fly for dinner or to avoid my size ten flip-flops.

Identifying this creature was at first difficult. I had an unidentified folder with four different damsels contained, only to discover that they were in fact, all the same species. The young females are a bright red, which fades to olive green with age. Young males have a green thorax with an orange tipped, black abdomen. As they age, the grow darker and the orange tip fades, as can be seen on today's example.

The males become covered in a whitish/bluish fungus like growth called pruinescence, so eventually they look like a white bodied damsel. You can see the pruinescence has started to take hold on this specimen. I have not noticed the pruinescence on any females and there is no mention in web literature on that point.

I decided to crop in close for a number of reasons: to show the pruinescence mainly, but also you can see the genitalia on the underside of the abdomen second segment. This damsel has been in a battle and lost its middle and rear right legs. You will notice that the middle left leg has been brought across to bring balance to the stance.

I found this leg repositioning thing very interesting as it cannot possibly be natural instinct. The leg loss occurrence is too rare for the solution to become hard wired and part of its genes. In my opinion, this indicates that insects have a thought process - what do you think?

Dave