SWEETWATER COUNTY – Dragonflies are a common site for residents across the state, but do you actually know the story surrounding them? Officials at Seedskadee and Cokeville Meadows National Wildlife Refuges recently gave a few facts about the dragonfly population in Wyoming.
The season is quickly coming to a close for adult dragonflies here in Wyoming. Only 50 of the world’s 5,200 dragonfly species are thought to migrate. Officials said the obvious question follows “If they don’t migrate, how do they survive?”
The simple answer is they don’t, the adults that is. The remaining 5,150 species of dragonfly that don’t migrate die as adults when the temperature drops and/or their food source of other insects disappear for the season.
Dragonfly larvae overwinter in the wetlands that don’t freeze completely to the bottom, and in the River. When the water and air temperatures rise again next spring and summer, the larvae develop into adults and reproduce new eggs that hatch in to larvae to repeat the cycle again.
