Species Spotlight: Desert Firetail

The Desert Firetail is a small delicate damselfly that likes to lay eggs on floating vegetation, like lily pads or algae. The male's abdomen is a fire red color—hence the common name.

Here are a couple males resting near a pond:



The red abdomen and short wings make this an easy damselfly to identify. Here's a photo that shows just how short the wings are in this species:



This is a male—as can be seen from the protrusion under segment 2 of the abdomen (the hamules) and the lack of an ovipositor at the tip of the abdomen. It is a young male, as evidenced by the light red color on the abdomen.

Pairs lay eggs with the male attached to the female. Males stand upright when attached, and if a group is laying eggs together the males can look like red blades of grass. Here's a pair in which the female is laying eggs on the underside of a lily pad:



A closer look at the female shows how the male is attached to the front of the female's thorax—not to the back of her head, as in dragonflies:



You may observe adults emerging from their larval (naiad) skins in the same general area where the eggs are being laid. Here's a larva that was swimming a few moments before the photo was taken, but who is now drying out on a lily pad, getting ready for the adult to emerge.



In a matter of minutes, the adult makes its appearance:



Soon thereafter the adult is fully emerged from its larval skin, and it now begins to pump up its abdomen and wings to their final size.



Ah, such is the life of an odonate!