Photo 2901512, (c) Tony Wills, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA), uploaded by Tony Wills

Attribution © Tony Wills
some rights reserved
Uploaded by tony_wills tony_wills
Source iNaturalist NZ
Associated observations

Photos / Sounds

What

Blue Damselfly (Austrolestes colensonis)

Observer

tony_wills

Date

March 12, 2010 01:54 PM NZDT

Description

I spent about an hour photographing this guy and took about 150 photos trying to get a really good shot of the whole beast and his lunch. So I managed to capture details of the anatomy - three photos of the claspers at the end of the abdomen which are used to hold the female, and one of the base of segment two where the female couples to. The first photo also shows some of the diagnostic features of the species, blue eyes, pale blue labrum at the front of the face, 3 blue blobs on the pro-thorax at the back of the eyes. The 'hairy' brown area on top of the thorax is interesting, the hairs are brownish, and from side on the area looks red/brown. But looked at straight on (eg from above) we instead see the black of the body instead.

For comparison see also the female at /observations/2592107.

To see the prey he was eating see /observations/2598840.

Scale.

Sizes