The Wheel Position

Identification - Agriocnemis femina femina.

This is a very common damsel fly, easily overlooked as it spends its time amongst the low shrubbery around your feet and is fairly small at about an inch or so long. Like all damsel flies, the eyes are well separated on its wide head and the wings are parked above the body, the two fundamental differences between damsels and dragons, their close relative.

The male (top) grabs the female behind the head with the claspers at the tip of his abdomen. Once captured, the female bends her abdomen round to contact with the male for copulation. This all occurs while in flight.

The strange thing is that the male's reproductive organs are at the tip of its abdomen, as are the females. The male has a second, non-function organ on the second segment of its abdomen, just behind the thorax. The male must physically transfer seed to this second organ prior to trapping the female. As yet, I have not witnessed this transfer or I didn't recognize what was going on.

Dragonflies have this same mating system of seed transfer and head holding, so the evolution of this system occurred before the species split. The system probably evolved when the dragons grew in body length, making walking impossible and therefore positioning for abdomen to abdomen mating also near impossible. I found nothing written down about this, so this is just my opinion.

Once copulation is complete, the male keeps hold of the female and flies her to the waters edge where the eggs are deposited. This prevents any other males from mating with the female, displacing his seed.

Dave