Off on a field trip to Costa Rica

Here are a few shots from our DSA meeting at State College, PA.The weather was pretty stormy for a lot of the meeting so our group photo ended up being shot indoors. _________________________________________________________This Calopteryx amata male was shot along Six Mile Run in Pennsylvania, during the DSA annual meeting at State College. It is the first time I have ever photographed this species and only the 2nd time I have seen it alive. While there are quite a few populations they are fairly small and scattered, so it might be considered fairly rare. I was lucky enough to get shots of the male and female within a few feet of each other. ________________________________________________________A Cordulegaster diastatops male shot on a small trickle stream near a beaver dam during the DSA meeting at State College, PA. _______________________________________________________-After the meeting was over I drove to Maryland to visit my sister and her family and wonder of wonders, she has a very nice pond that covers several acres in her back yard. It was loaded with dragonflies including a number of species I have never photographed before.This is the exuviea of a dragonfly, Anax longipes. It is the skin of the dragonfly nymph that is shed when the nymph becomes an adult. Dragonflies go through incomplete metamorphosis, which means that they do not have a pupal or cocoon stage between the larva and the adult. The nymph lives for one to five or more years as an underwater predator before it emerges as a winged adult (the mating and dispersal stage). ________________________________________________________This is the adult female of Anax longipes. This is the first time I have ever photographed this species. It also turned out to be a new county record for the species in Maryland. _____________________________________________________Edited by Tanypteryx, : spelling

Always amazed at the clear shots and colors you get in your work, Tanypteryx.Do you ever publish these pics? They're professional quality stuff.

Paul, thank you for your kind words.I have had some of my work published over the years. Of course, when I worked as an Insect Imaging Specialist, most of my work was used in scientific publications of one sort or another. During that time, I produced more than 6K images. These are all what are called "extended depth of field" images using image stacking techniques.I am just finishing up the processing of a set of images for a guide to the Odonata of the Pacific Northwest. It will be 400+ pages and will include photomicrographs of all the defining characters of every species and lateral and dorsal views of males and females and of any color morphs.I have always been a printmaker. Back in the day I made large Cibachrome prints. My wife was a framer, so she matted and framed my prints and we sold lots of them and rented some to local offices. I still have the darkroom but have not used it to make prints for many years.These days I am working on a body of work (at least 100 prints), mostly dragonflies, but also some photomicrographs, and some scenery. These are all printed 16x24 inches with an Epson printer on archival paper and with pigment based archival inks. I have some ideas for how and where I want to display them.Digital photography has changed the art completely. It means that almost everyone can produce professional quality stuff, so I have decided that I don't want to compete for a share of the market. I shoot and print what pleases me and if it sells ok, but I am not counting on it for a living. A year from now I hope to have one or two of my dragonfly photos, printed so big you can see every little hair, in every gallery along the Oregon Coast.This is probably way more than you wanted to know, but there it is anyway.

Lucky for them that they are poisonous because they do look good enough to eat.

Well, if you like to eat frogs maybe......I wonder what the selective pressure is that favors bright colors in amphibians? Warning predators, competition for mates, or attracting mates, or maybe all of these?I saw a surprising number of different brightly colored species, but this was the only one I was able to photograph.Costa Rica has a high diversity of amphibians and reptiles compared to other parts of tropical America I have visited.

quote:

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Mark Twain 'Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.'

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There's a delicate balance between the ability to attract mates and the ability to evade predators. I suppose species that have the eyesight to appreciate bright colours also have an advantage in seeing the predators coming.

I don't know if these frogs can see these colors or not, but for their size they do have fairly large eyes. They all seem to live in habitat that is very dimly lit ( I would not have been able to photograph them without flash). Frogs also have distinctive calls that attract mates.They do see us well enough to immediately try to hide, but maybe their toxicity makes them so immune to predation that they never have to avoid it and their biggest worry is being stepped on by big clumsy humans.

I am headed out in the morning on a short, 5-6 day field trip to southern Oregon amd northern California. There are reports of large numbers of a dragonfly species, that has never been reported in OR, flying in a county in CA that borders OR. So maybe my friend and I can get a new state record.I also want to try and photograph and collect eggs and nymphs to rear of a very large species that is found in a few places in northern CA. Anax walsinghami is one of the largest dragonflies and their nymphs should be quite impressive. Good captive photo and video subjects.Like many other biologists, Odonatists are seeing a number of species expanding the ranges northward. Two species have expanded northward through Oregon and well into Washington over the last 20 years. I see many reports from all across North America for dragonflies and other entomologists are seeing similar things with many other insect groups.Tallyho

climate change? How does the ecology compare between old habitat and the new ?Enjoy

I'm seeing more dragonflies this year than I have ever seen and in particular right now swarms of thumb length ones that flash bright red in the sun.

Home brew will do that to you.

There are a lot of species that are red. It seems to be a favored color and some have red veins and/or red in the wing membrane.Texas is in a special spot geographically to see lots of new species for the U. S. and there are quite a few avid dragonfly watchers there.

Our working hypothesis is climate change. So far, the species have been generalists, so it is not really a factor of their habitat changing. More warm summer days and fewer cold winter days seem to be enough to allow them to breed and survive in lots of ponds and sluggish streams.We did find the species we were looking for that is new to Oregon, Tramea onusta. We got it in Curry County within a kilometer of the coast, on Wednesday. Today a guy posted from Medford in Jackson County that they were there, so as long as it stays hot we may even see them here in the Willamette Valley.Interestingly, Tramea onusta probably will not be able to breed successfully in Oregon. They seem to be a species that goes through the nymph stage quite rapidly and then they disperse as widely as possible, and breed whereever they find mates. They seem to be adapted to hotter regions and the nymphs do not finish development at the northern parts of their adult range. Normally, they and several other species that use this wide dispersal strategy oviposit and the nymphs develop in bodies of water that are temporary (that dry up later in the season) and that do not have predators. My hypothesis is that when they oviposit in more permanent aquatic habitats they are preyed on by the more numerous local species.ABE: We made it down to the are in California where I expected to collect nymphs and indeed I did collect a few that should be interesting to rear out. I got one male Anax walsinghami, but we were only able to get a few photos of it in hand. I will try and post some of those later to give you an idea just how large the monster is.We were on Bear Creek which is very near one of the large wildfires burning right now. Sunday morning when we woke up our vehicles and equipment were all covered by ash and the air was very smoky. Today I see that Hwy 20 is closed where we drove out on Sunday and a bunch of homes have burned and the fire has tripled in size. I am glad we decided to leave when we did.Oh, and we had an otter at one of the pools in the creek that sat on a rock and watched the crazy guys with nets and cameras. I post some shots of him tomorrow too.Edited by Tanypteryx, : No reason given.

I have been thinking about starting a new topic to discuss one of the talks presented at the dragonfly meeting I attended in Pennsylvania.The talk was about research into the dragonfly family Petaluridae (Tanypteryx is one of the genera in Petaluridae). The research was published in the journal Biogeography in 2014. There are only 11 species in the family and the study involved extensive DNA analysis of all the species and related their present geographical distribution with where those locations were when the super-continent Pangea broke up. The DNA studies indicate that the Petaluridae were already a dragonfly family then and that the split of the different species groups corresponds to the breakup of the continent. There are 2 species in North America. Tachopteryx thoryi is fairly widespread in the eastern U. S. and Tanypteryx hageni is confined to the Cascade Mts. in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia and in the Sierras as far south as Yosemite. Tanypteryx pryori is found only in Japan. Phenes raptor is only found in Chile. Then there are 4 species found in Australia and New Zealand. So, the distribution is roughly around the ring of fire, except for the species in the eastern U. S.This was one of the most interesting talks I have ever seen and heard and evidence was also presented that one of the species alive today is over 100 million years old and may be the single oldest multicellular species on the planet!Every one of us attending the meeting was completely blown away. One of the truly great things about these scientific meetings is the number of teachers who are there with their students and some of them have their own students now. The continuity of research and science is really quite extraordinary.Is anyone interested in discussing this as a topic? It seems to me that the group here might be able to give me some new insights.Edited by Tanypteryx, : spelling Chili