Clear the gardenĪs mentioned above, daddy longlegs look for a damp environment to mate and lay their larvae, so ensuring your garden is well-trimmed, consistently mowed and cleared of leaf debris is a good way of helping to keep the flying insects at bay. Here are three ways of making your indoor space less hospitable for daddy longlegs: 1. You should avoid killing daddy longlegs, not only because there are alternative ways to move them along without harming them, but they also prey on smaller insects and so work to our advantage when it comes to insect control. How do you get daddy longlegs out of the house? The average lifespan for a daddy longlegs is between 10 and 15 days. This means they can often be found in garden lawns, though they prefer more sodden grassland. Where do daddy longlegs live?ĭaddy longlegs prefer damp climates, and breed in the soil amongst grassy areas. They can range in length from 3-7mm and the legs are typically several times as long as their body. The adult daddy longlegs is a brown, long-bodied insect, with translucent wings and very long legs, which easily fall off if handled. 10 gardening jobs to prepare for autumn.She enjoys taking photos of our urban wild things. Jeanine Farley is an educational writer who has lived in the Boston area for more than 30 years. To watch a dragonfly catch a midge in midair, check out this amazing video. Unfortunately, dragonfly populations around the world are in dangerous decline owing to decreasing wetlands, global warming and the use of pesticides. Dragonflies, with their appetite for mosquitoes, are indicators of a healthy ecosystem.They can fly at speeds up to 38 miles per hour. Dragonflies are the world’s fastest insects.Fossil records show that dragonflies were alive more than 100 million years before dinosaurs roamed the earth.They can fly in any direction or hover in one spot for more than a minute. This allows them to change direction in midair by changing the angle of each wing. The dragonfly has two sets of wings that work independently.Dragonflies catch up to 95 percent of the prey they pursue, making them one of the most efficient hunters in the animal kingdom.It’s no wonder, then, that almost 80 percent of a dragonfly’s brain is dedicated to sight and that they process information faster than humans – about 200 images per second, compared with humans’ 60 images per second. Unlike humans, who have three opsins that allow us to see the colors of the rainbow – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet – dragonflies have four or five opsins and can see colors out of range for humans: The top portion of a dragonfly’s eye captures shorter wavelengths of light, such as ultraviolet, while the lower portion of the eye captures longer wavelengths, such as reds.ĭragonflies can detect light signals coming from all directions better than the best lenses on the best cameras today. Each facet sees in only one direction, but the total number of facets allows the dragonfly to see in nearly all directions.Įach ommatidium contains light-sensitive proteins called opsins. Their bulging, round compound eyes are composed of 30,000 facets, or photoreceptor cells called ommatidia. Much of this has to do with their phenomenal eyesight. (Photo: Jeanine Farley)ĭragonflies are agile and swift flyers with incredibly fast reflexes. The adult swallows air to plump up its body and pumps hemolymph, the bloodlike substance of insects, into its wings.Ī red-eyed blue dasher alights on a fence post. There, it lifts its head out of the water as its body adapts to breathing air, then climbs a plant stem out of the water, where its skin splits behind its head and the adult dragonfly emerges. When a naiad is ready to metamorphose into an adult dragonfly, it swims to the surface at night. They breathe through gills in their gut, and they propel themselves by expelling water from the rear of their abdomen. During this time, they shed their exoskeletons six or more times. Blue dasher naiads live underwater for up to two years. When the eggs hatch, the nymphs, or naiads, are voracious predators that eat almost anything smaller than they are, including mosquito larvae (a favorite), tiny fish or tadpoles. The female hovers above the water and dips the tip of her abdomen into the water’s surface to deposit up to 700 eggs. (Photo: Jeanine Farley) (Photo: Jeanine Farley) Dragonflies rest with their wings in a horizontal, spread-out position, while damselflies fold their wings over their body. A blue dasher rests near Fresh Pond in Cambridge.
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