From: "Christopher Rogers" <crogers at ecoanalysts.com> on 2009.01.23 at 16:53:32(18954)
Hiyer!
Dragonflies and damselflies are not pollinators. They arepredators. They would not be around your pond unless there was plenty to eat!They are quite voracious, with the aquatic larvae eating the stuff in the pondand the adults eating whatever emerges or flies by. They are death on mosquitolarvae, dayflying mosquitos, blackflies, gnats, midges and other flies. I haveeven watched them pluck spiders from the center of their webs.
One goofy thing is that in Jamaica and a few other CaribbeanIslands (Julius and I discussed this together long ago) there are freshwatercrabs that live in the water collected in bromeliad axils. There aredamselflies that only lay their eggs in these little aquariums. They have anelongated abdomen to reach way back in to the axils. If a crab is present, theywill grab the damselflies’ abdomen and reel it in. The crab will eat thedamselfly, and maybe cut it up into small pieces for its young crabs swimmingin the bromeliad tank. This still releases the damselfly’s eggs, which hatch,and the young damsels then are predators on the crab larvae. Go figure.
Happy days,
Christopher
D.Christopher Rogers
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