Common Whitetail Dragonfly

Common Whitetail Dragonfly

Common Whitetail Dragonfly

This little dude is from New River Gorge in West Virginia. He’s one of the less fantastic bug photos I have, so he gets the honor of being first on the blog.

He was hanging out near a river that we hiked down eating tons of wild raspberries (goodness gracious YUM!) on our way.

This guy is a +ahem+ guy as identified by his white body (women are much less eye-catching brownish). His big white belly is called a pruinescence or bloom (per Wikipedia) that is essentially a pigment on top of the insects cuticle that covers up the underlying coloration so that it looks frosty or dusted over.
The really interesting part about the pruinescence is that its thought that perhaps the color (in this case, the white part) that we see is caused by a Tyndall Scattering of light that look pale to us. In ultraviolet, however – these colors can reflect very strongly and can be shown as a territorial threat to other males. On that note, these little dragonflies are territorial and will actively guard their areas (usually near a creek or other body of water so they can heartily munch on mosquitoes).

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