Odonates have been recognized as an important group for evaluating ecosystems since they are used as bioindicators of the conservation status of the habitat they occupy, in addition to being generalist predators feeding on invertebrates and small vertebrates. In this work, the biodiversity of adult odonates from a locality near the San Marcos River, in…

Water mites (Arrenurus spp.) parasitize adult dragonflies. We collected dragonflies weekly at 11 waterbodies in Greenville Co. and Pickens Co., SC, USA, to: (1) compare parasitism prevalence across species, sites, and sampling periods; (2) test the hypothesis that prevalence correlates with host abundance; (3) test the hypothesis that prevalence is inversely related to host diversity…

This study showed that the main impact on Odonata species of removal of riparian vegetation for road building was on community composition, since species richness remained unaltered. This result, most evident in damselflies, was probably driven by the entry of generalist species that replaced specialist species after the impact. We collected adult odonates in forested…

Of the many Zygopteran genera that occur in the Neotropics, only five (Hetaerina, Archilestes, Lestes, Argia, and Ischnura) are represented north of 40°N in North America, and only three of these (Hetaerina, Archilestes, and Argia) probably had a tropical origin. In the two genera of Lestidae (Archilestes and Lestes) the life history of temperate-zone populations…

Larval growth rate has the same temperature coefficient in three species of coenagrionids, but Argia vivida and Amphiagrion abbreviatum, which frequently live in geothermally heated water, grow fastest at 29.0–30.0°C compared with 23.4°C for Coenagrion resolutum, which lives in cooler water. Survival below 15°C in the laboratory was much better in C. resolutum. These characteristics…