New dragonflies continue to emerge as we move deeper into spring and yesterday I spotted my first Twelve-spotted Skimmer dragonfly (Libellula pulchella) of the season, a strikingly beautiful young male. It’s easy to tell that this one is a male because the female does not have the white spots. Local dragonfly expert and fellow photographer and blogger, Walter Sanford, commented to me that, “This guy is a “freshie.” His abdomen will turn white with pruinescence when he matures.”
I am a curious guy and I started to wonder how you are supposed to count the spots to get to the twelve in this species’ name. Do the white ones count? Do the interconnected brown ones in the middle count as one or as two? Who decides?
This is not as simple as it seems and this species is sometimes known as the Ten-spotted Skimmer. Really? A bugguide.net article explains it this way:
“Once upon a time, this was the Ten-spot(ted) Skimmer, and formerly appeared in most books under that common name. To make it so, the basal spot of opposite wings was counted as one spot crossing the thorax (and so it appears at a glance, especially when they are flying or seen from a distance). Some authors rationalize it as counting the cloudy white spots on the wings, but that’s only good for mature males, and it often doesn’t work (there are often only eight white spots, the two at the base of the hind wing either missing or having been rubbed off).”
Confused? Hopefully we all can agree on the distinctive beauty of the species.
I’ll be keeping my eyes open for more of these dragonflies, although I learned yesterday from Kevin Munroe’s wonderful Dragonflies of Northern Virginia website that it is unusual to see more than a few of them at any one site. Apparently the Twelve-spotted Skimmers are a bit more picky about their habitat needs than many of the other skimmers in our area.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
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Mike Powell 