Freshly Published: The Dragonflies of Vermont

Calico Pennant (Celithemis elisa) / © Bryan Pfeiffer

LONG AFTER WE’RE GONE, when insects rule the world, dragonflies will rule all insects. In the meantime, here’s your new manual about dragonflies of Vermont.

Mike Blust and I have co-authored the first comprehensive assessment of Vermont’s 142 species of damselflies and dragonflies. Find it in the current issue of the peer-reviewed Bulletin of American Odontology (Vol. 11, No. 3–4, 23 November 2015).

This is not a field guide to our dragonflies. Instead, Mike and I document the distribution (with maps), conservation status, and flight periods of Vermont’s 99 dragonfly species and 43 damselfly species. We also describe the history of the study of these insects (Odonatology) in the state. We even include tips on finding, netting, or simply observing these ancient and intrepid animals. For our analysis and results, we assembled a dataset of nearly 7,000 dragonflies records (many of them our own) spanning the period from 1891 to 2015.

Oh, you don’t subscribe to the Bulletin of American Odonatology? Shame on you. Until then, you can email me for a PDF of our 56-page paper. Here’s the citation:

Blust, Michael and B. Pfeiffer, “The Odonata of Vermont,” Bulletin of American Odonatology, Vol. 11, No. 3–4, 23 November 2015. 69-119.