Dragons & Damsels: Ceriagrion bellona

Zygoptera

Species Name: Ceriagrion bellona

Family: Coenagrionidae

Members of the genus Ceriagrion are indeed some of the most beautiful damselflies, they come in shades of red, green and yellow. Back in 2005 when I just started to photograph and learn about Odonata I found some mating and ovipositing pairs of C. bellona along a small stream in hill country on the forest edge in Tambunan. The thorax of the males are orange and greenish with bright red abdomens while the females are mainly olive green. Males look quite similar to C. cerinorubellum which is the commoner of the two Ceriagrion species found in Borneo.

C. bellona is restricted to north Borneo and is recorded at 1000m on Mount Kinabalu as well as in the lowlands at Danum Valley.

What is a Dragonfly?

What is a dragonfly? Dragonflies and damselflies are the most recognizable of all insects, so if you don't know already, the images on this blog will show you how they look like. And I'll just tell you about how they are generally classified without attempting to go into how scientists (called odonatologists) separate them into families, genera, species and subspecies. Which is just too complicated for even this Dragonchaser!
Dragonflies and damselflies belong to the order Odonata which is further divided into the subfamilies Anisoptera ("True" Dragonfly) and Zygoptera (Damselflies). However when we say "dragonfly" we generally mean any of the Odonata which can be either a dragonfly(Anisoptera) or a damselfly (Zygoptera). But if we say "damselfly" we mean only a Zygopteran and not Anisopteran! Understand?

Dragonflies vs Damselflies

Dragonflies (Suborder Anisoptera) dragonflies are larger, have large eyes that touch or almost touch, two pairs of strong transparent wings which are dissimilar, the hindwings broaden near the base to the connecting point to their bodies. They rest with their wings open and held horizontally.

Damselflies (Suborder Zygoptera) damselflies are small and delicate-looking, and have eyes that are separated. They rest holding their wings together above the body or held slightly open above. The hindwing of the damselfly is essentially similar to the forewing.

Both however have similar life cycles. Females lays their eggs in or near water. The larval or immature odonates (meaning member of the Odonata) are called nymphs or naiads using internal gills to breathe, and using extendable jaws (Have you seen the movie Alien?) to catch other aquatic insects or even tadpoles and fish. The larvae of large dragonflies may live as long as five years, or two months to three years in smaller species. When the the larva is ready to metamorphose into an adult, it climbs up some emergent plant at night. Then the skin splits at a weak spot behind the head and the adult dragonfly crawls out of its old larval skin, waits for the sun to rise, pumps up its wings and flies off to feed on flying insects like mosquitoes and flies. In the adult stage, larger species of dragonfly can live as long as four months.

Dragonfly in Other Languages

What do other people call drangonflies (and damselflies)? Here's a short list that I've compiled without googling, honest!

Dragonfly (english),
Ching-ting 蜻蜓(chinese-putonghua),
Pepatung or Patung-patung,also Sibu-sibu(bahasa malaysia),
Tutubi (tagalog - philippines),
Alindanaw (cebuano - philippines),
Libelo (esperanto),
Tombo とんぼ (japanese),
Tompokizu (kadazan - malaysia),
Tompokiyu, Kiyu-kiyu or kuyu-kuyu (dusun - malaysia),
Capung (bahasa indonesia),
Tike, antolin (toraja - indonesia).

Tumbikal (malayalam - india)
Koora, Bath Koora (sinhalese - sri lanka)

Dragons & Damsels

Sunday 4 January 2009

Ceriagrion bellona

5 comments:

Dragonfly in Other Languages

Chuồn chuồn - (vietnamese)

Mang Por - (lao)

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