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Green darner dragonflies migrate over several generations

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Anax junius.JPG


female green darner dragonfly, Anax junius /Bruce Marlin  (CC BY 3.0 )

Like monarch butterflies. Apparently, the shimmering dragonfly migrates like the Monarch butterfly, taking three generations to loop across North America:

At least three generations make up the annual migration of common green darner dragonflies. The first generation emerges in the southern United States, Mexico and the Caribbean starting around February and flies north. There, those insects lay eggs and die, giving rise to second generation that migrates south until late October. (Some in that second generation don’t fly south until the next year, after overwintering as nymphs.) A third generation, hatched in the south, overwinters there before laying eggs that will start the entire process over again. (from the chart) …

An adult darner, regardless of where it was born, is “a green piece of lightning,” says McFarland, of the Vermont Center for Ecostudies in White River Junction. Darners maneuver fast enough to snap insect prey out of the air around ponds across North America. The front of an adult’s large head is “all eye,” he says, and trying to catch samples for the study was “like hitting a knuckleball.”

Susan Milius, “Green darner dragonflies migrate a bit like monarch butterflies” at ScienceNews

The question that it raises is, how do the insects “know” that they should migrate over several generations? When a larva becomes a pupa, the body completely dissolves and is reconstituted as an adult. Where and how exactly does the information survive? Reside? Some work done on molecular clocks is providing some hints.

See also: Why Some People Think That Monarch Butterflies Show Evidence Of Design

and

Honest Recognition Of The Monarch Butterfly Migration Puzzle Leaps From ID Confabs To Mainstream

Also, if we are talking about dragonflies anyway: Fossil Dragonfly Named In Mike Behe’s Honor Has Implications For ID

and

Dragonfly Both Perfect At First AND “The Perfected Result” Of 300 Mya Of Evolution?

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