Flight strategies and wing parameters in North American dragonflies (Odonata)

Description

Wing morphology of dragonflies is largely shaped by intra-, intersexual and natural selection pressures. The three flight strategies that have been proposed for the anisopteran dragonflies (perchers, fliers and intermediates) supposedly require different specific functional traits of the wing. Based on the Targeted Odonata Wing Digitization (TOWD) database which aims at digitizing the wings of all North American Odonata species as well as further New World taxa, wing parameters as wing shape and wing load in various dragonfly species are determined in order to study their relation to the respective flight strategy.

Location