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United States News Title: Hunting the diminutive DRAGON The hunters fanned out across a meadow in northern Minnesota on Saturday, their eyes scanning the grass for a swift, ancient and elusive beastie with a reputation for wickedness and ferocity. They were looking for Odonata — "the toothed ones" in Latin — a reference to vicious teeth used to tear chunks of flesh from their prey. With an athletic spring and a swoop of the net, a hunter snared one of the predators. The captive's bulging, green eyes blazed in the sunlight with alien hostility. "It's already on our list. Do you want to keep it for our teaching collection?" asked one of the hunters. "I've already got a lot of Emeralds," said the leader. And so instead of being slipped into an envelope, this dragonfly got to live another day. Just another day in the field for the Minnesota Odonata Survey Project, a group of citizen scientists and amateur naturalists who are trying to document the diversity and range of dragonfly and damselfly species in the state. The venture is the brainchild of Finland, Minn., resident Kurt Mead, who can bid fair to be the Roger Tory Peterson (renowned ornithologist) of Minnesota's dragonflies. Mead, who has worked as a naturalist, said he became fascinated with dragonflies about 10 years ago. About five years ago, he wrote the book on dragonflies in this area, "Dragonflies of the North Woods," a field guide to the creatures. And last year, he started the survey project with $68,000 in grants from the state Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The money helps pay for a series of workshops throughout the state to train members of the public to observe, catch and identify dragonflies and damselflies and to encourage members to fan out across the state and see what's out there. The reward is the thrill of the hunt and the chance to make a small but genuine scientific contribution. Dragonflies are at the top of their own little food chain, and they live much of their lives as larvae in fresh water. As a result, they are like a canary in the coal mine for the region's environment. Their presence or absence can give an early warning of changes due to pollution, development or climate change. There are 98 known dragonfly or damselfly species statewide, but there are many counties with virtually no documented records of what's there, Mead said. He said until recently there probably were only about a half-dozen people in the state actively observing and trying to identify dragonflies. Thanks to Mead's project, that number has gone up to a few dozen now. But it's still a wide-open field for someone who wants to be the first to find a new species in his or her neck of the woods. "We're probably the least well-surveyed state in the lower 48," Mead said. Mead himself still gets excited talking about a dragonfly netted last month near Isabella, Minn., by Eric Holmstrom, a secondary life-science teacher from Duluth, Minn. When Holmstrom handed the insect to Mead to identify, "I just about dropped to my knees." It was an Ebony Boghaunter, an elusive dragonfly documented in Wisconsin but never before seen in Minnesota. "For nine years, this little bugger has plagued me." Mead said dragonfly observation in the state is still 100 years behind its nearest counterpart — bird-watching. He said he'd like to recruit some of the thousands of bird-watchers in the area to use their binocular and identification skills on dragonflies. Even if they aren't scientifically significant, dragonflies deserve attention because they are just plain fascinating, according to Mead. If big mammals like tigers and elephants are called charismatic megafauna, dragonflies are charismatic microfauna, he said. That's because they're beautiful, sporting radiant, jewel-like eyes and brilliant spots and stripes on their wings and bodies. And they're fearsome. With sharklike predatory voraciousness, a dragonfly will devour anything it can kill, even creatures bigger than itself. "Basically, if it's moving through the air, they're going to attack it," Mead said. One of the biggest species in the state, the Dragonhunter, is big enough to cover the palm of your hand. Dragonhunters have reportedly eaten hummingbirds. "This one has a worldwide reputation for being a beast," Mead said. "You get one in your hand and your jaw will drop." And they can fly like no other bug. A dragonfly can pull nine Gs of force in a turn and accelerate up to three Gs, said Charles Habermann, a robotics engineer from Bloomington who keeps a PowerPoint presentation in his laptop comparing a dragonfly to jet fighter planes. A dragonfly can hover, fly upside down and sideways. And it's the only insect that can fly backward, Mead said. "I know the CIA had been working on a mechanical dragonfly spy drone back in the 1970s and 1980s. They actually got it to fly, but they couldn't control it, so it was abandoned," he said. No wonder dragonflies have loomed large in the human imagination. In Japan, they are revered symbols of victory, and their images are found on samurai swords. But in Europe, they are sometimes reputed to be intermediaries of the devil, capable of sewing a person's eyes or ears shut. They have nicknames like the Devil's Darning Needle, the Snake Doctor and the Hobgoblin Fly. Common names for individual species are equally colorful: Stygian Shadowdragon, Cyrano Darner, Calico Pennant, Elfin Skimmer, Splendid Clubtail. This weekend's outing of the survey project took place at the Audubon Center of the North Woods near Sandstone. Mead hoped to add 15 more species to the 61 known dragonflies in Pine County. By noon Saturday, the group of eight dragonfly hunters had already found five new county records and a possible sixth. Some of the dragonflies were distinctive enough to be identified on the wing. "That's an Emerald right there," Habermann said of a hovering hunter nearby. "They like to sit and do patterns. See, he went after some food. Now, we're back in the pattern." Unlike birds, dragonflies can't be identified by their calls. "They have no vocalization. No sense of hearing. No sense of humor," Mead said. But they can be netted and examined with a pocket magnifier. By consulting descriptions in Mead's field guide, details like wing veins, body structure and appendages are checked to make a final identification. Some Odonata observers in the state send Mead digital photos of what they catch to confirm identification. Others just send the whole bug. "The days of birding with a shotgun are over, but you can collect Odonata without hurting the population," Mead said. He said observers kill more bugs with their windshields traveling to the trailhead than they do with their nets. "Grab him by two or more legs," Mead advised Chev Kellogg, a new Odonata watcher from St. Paul, as Kellogg extracted a dragonfly from his net Saturday. "Two or more, you're safe. If you get one, they fly around in a circle and the leg will pop off. "She's laying eggs. See if you can catch them in your hand," Mead said as they examined the bug. Kellogg, who does water quality work for the DNR, watched in fascination as the newly netted Meadowhawk deposited tiny cream-colored flecks on his palm. The species Kellogg found has already been identified in Pine County. If it had been a new species, it would be slipped into a envelope with a label detailing where and when it was found and sent to the University of Minnesota's insect collection in the Twin Cities. The collection already has about 5,000 Odonata specimens from the state dating back to 1891, Mead said, which were recently cataloged as part of a survey project effort. Kellogg let go of the Meadowhawk. Then he carefully shook the eggs from his hand. "I still feel guilty about killing something that I don't have to," he said. Fyi For more information on the Minnesota Odonata Survey Project, see www.mndragonfly.org.
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