Complete Guide To The Ebony Jewelwing Damselfly

Ebony Jewelwing Damselfly Notes

• Look for Ebony Jewelwing damselflies throughout North Carolina near slow-moving forest streams that have lots of vegetation and nearby trees.
• Male Ebony Jewelwing damselflies are territorial and will defend a chosen territory for several days.
  • Rival males engage in “flights of attrition”, where they chase each other around in circles. The males fly in close proximity and at high speed until one of the males quits the contest by breaking away from the circling flight or landing (Paulson 2011).
• Female Ebony Jewelwing damselflies lay their eggs on underwater plants and sometimes even submerge their entire bodies to do so (Abbott 2011).
• Like all insects, the body temperature of Ebony Jewelwing damselflies rely on ambient temperatures; the cooler the air, the cooler the damselflies.
  • Ebony Jewelwing damselflies bask in the sun to warm themselves. But in a study that researched the impact of wing color on damselfly body temperatures, researchers discovered that female Ebony Jewelwing damselflies were consistently 1.5 degrees Celsius hotter than males throughout the day, possibly due to their thicker abdomens (Schreiner, Duffy, and Brown 2020, https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.6864).