Eastern Forktail Damselfly - Ischnura verticalis - mating pair
In contrast to the grandest specie of all Dragonflies to rule over the lakes and ponds of North America uploaded last week, these individuals are far more dainty and smaller, but they are no less beautiful to behold as they flit and dart about near rivers and streams. We've seen this variety of Damselfly before in image sets featuring solo individuals going about their routines among the wilderness. However, today's post provides our first look at a mating pair of these marvelous insects! Compared to more modern insects (in terms of evolution) in which the male tends to just climb aboard or both individuals back into each other rear to rear to facilitate mating, Odonates have a very unique and choreographed process of forming tandems in order to secure their mate. Given how their bodies overall are structured and since they carry such long abdomens with very limited side-to-side mobility, Odonates will form a copulatory wheel (or wheel position) in order to ensure that their gametes wind up in the right place. It all begins when the male individual (the green one) successfully attracts a female (the blue one) individual within his well secured territory.
The male will use his antennal claspers to grab the female behind her head. While that sounds a bit domineering at first, it is necessary to allow the female stability so that she can curl up her abdomen towards him with precision. While typically it's abdomen tip to abdomen tip for mating, male Damselflies keep their gametes in secondary genital structures at the base of their abdomen, rather than the tip. As such, after a successful grasp, the female will bring her abdomen underneath her own body and meet the base of the male's abdomen, thusly forming a wheel shape. And so, the mating pair is formed and can remain as such as several hours until gamete transfer and fertilization is finished. Although they appear encumbered by remained attached to one another, an Odonate mating pair is still very much capable of flying together in order to evade onlookers or seek out a suitable location for laying eggs. In that case, the male must be able to take off and land successfully, but the female is happy to help steer (her legs tend to stay off of the ground). On the subject of laying eggs, after mating terminates the male may still continue to grasp the female until she's done placing her eggs.
Remember, Damselfly nymphs are aquatic, so the eggs must be laid near or underneath water. Since the grasping can remain, this can be a useful strategy to ensure that the female can be immediately rescued if she were to accidentally slip into the water during egg-laying. Typically though, the male uses this strategy in order to act as a guard during oviposition and act as a deterrent against eager or opportunistic males. However, I'm uncertain as to how stringent this specie is on the grasping strategy. Simply it's a commonality among Odonates, Damselflies very much included. Nevertheless, a survival strategy like that helps to ensure that a male's particular offspring are the ones born, as Odonates can be extremely competitive when it comes to securing progeny. Fortunately for this specie, there are many reports that indicate that it appears to mostly form monogamous pairs; a rather uncommon behavior among Damselflies. While this pair was very lucky to find each other, other individuals have until early autumn (from early summer) to find and secure a mate.
Pictures were taken on August 3, 2025 at the Royal Botanical Gardens with a Google Pixel 8a.
