What insects are colorful and both harmless and beneficial to humans? They fly during the day, live wherever there’s water and sun, and, with guidebooks and their relatively large size, are easy identify. Don’t’ guess butterflies.
Dragonflies and damselflies are odonates. Unlike more advanced beetles, flies, and moths, odonates have an ancient pattern of veins on the wings and cannot fold their wings closely over their body. However, they have sophisticated eyes, over twenty to thirty thousand per head. Their sex life is also more sophisticated than anything human. At a site near the front of its abdomen, odonates store genetic material from the reproductive organ at the abdomen’s tip. The male grabs the female thorax with the tip of his abdomen while the female arches its abdomen to reach the male goodies, resulting in wheel-like, acrobatic mating. Only Mr. Right mates because the female can only be grasped effectively by the same species. Effective grasping and transferring genetic material cannot occur at the same place, hence the unique storage site.