Wild Facts About The Eastern Amberwing Dragonfly
Meet The Eastern Amberwing Dragonfly
If you’ve ever walked near a pond or slow-moving stream anywhere in the eastern half of the United States, you’ve probably spotted some tiny, golden-winged dragonflies zip past. These are Eastern Amberwing Dragonflies. They’re bold, active, and clever little hunters.
Read on to find out how to identify them, where to find them, and what makes them so fun to watch.
How To Identify Eastern Amberwing Dragonflies
Eastern Amberwing Dragonflies are one of the smallest dragonflies in the eastern United States. Their bodies are about 1.0 inch (25 mm) long and their hind wings are about 0.75 inches (19 mm) long.
Unlike many dragonflies, Eastern Amberwings have relatively short, thick bodies and are easy to recognize once you know what to look for.
How To Identify Male Amberwing Dragonflies
- Two-colored eyes, red-brown above and green below.
- Brown face.
- Brown thorax (the segment with wings) with irregular yellow green stripes on the shoulders and sides.
- Red-brown abdomen with thin yellow rings around each segment.
- Yellow cerci (the appendages at their abdominal tips).
- Orange-yellow legs.
- Four amber-colored wings with orange veins and a dark orange spot.
How To Identify Female Amberwing Dragonflies
Female Amberwing Dragonflies look similar to males except their wings are clear, with two dark blotches and a dark red pterostigmas. The color of their bodies is duller than those of males.
Where To Find Eastern Amberwing Dragonflies
Eastern Amberwing Dragonflies live throughout the entire eastern United States, north to south, and are usually common. Look for them:
- Near still water, such as ponds, lakes, drainage ditches, and retaining ponds.
- Perched on the tips of reeds or twigs, often in sunny spots.
Tiny But Mighty
Male Eastern Amberwing Dragonflies are small compared to other dragonfly species and insects, but they are very territorial.
Their territories are quite small, ranging from 54 square feet (Abbott 2015) to 100 square feet (Dunkle 2000). That’s roughly the size of a small bedroom.
Interestingly, male Amberwings choose who to chase out of their territories based on size and color. Like all dragonflies, Eastern Amberwings have excellent eyesight.
One study researched the territorial responses of male Eastern Amberwing dragonflies to territorial intrusions by five different dragonfly species, and two other non-dragonfly species. In the study, over the course of 4,027 territorial intrusions male Amberwings reacted most strongly to the following insects:
- Horse flies (Tabanus spp.)
- Least Skipper butterflies (Ancycloxypha numitor) (Shultz and Switzer 2001, https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1012223217250).
They responded most often to these intruders and approached them more closely, possibly because the Horse Flies are similar in size and shape to female Amberwings and the Least Skipper Butterflies resemble rival Amberwing males.
For the most part, the male dragonflies ignored the Prince Baskettail, Pondhawk, Widow Skimmer, Blue Dasher, and Common Whitetail dragonflies, all of which look very different from Eastern Amberwings and are much bigger (Shultz and Switzer 2001, https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1012223217250).
Pretending To Be Dangerous
Eastern Amberwing dragonflies have a clever trick for avoiding predators—they mimic wasps.
- When perched, both male and female Amberwings pump their wings up and down, like wasps do.
- In flight, female Amberwings hold their abdomens and back wings upright, making them look like wasps on the move.
Wasps are quite dangerous to many insect predators that might otherwise hunt Amberwings. This clever mimicry may also confuse larger predators like birds and frogs and let the dragonflies escape.
Eastern Amberwing Dragonfly Classification
|
Phylum |
Arthropoda |
|
Class |
Insecta |
|
Order |
Odonata |
|
Family |
Libellulidae (Skimmer Dragonflies) |
|
Genus |
Perithemis |
|
Species |
P. tenera |
Binomial Name |
Perithemis tenera |
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