Spangled paternity

A host of newly minted dragonflies have been emerging from the water over the past week, and they all seem to have one thing on their collective minds: sex, sex, and, when the preliminaries are done, more sex. This will not strike readers as especially surprising, but if you watch odonates for any length of time, you will find their mating activities a bit on the... um, bizarre or acrobatic, take your pick... side. This pair of Spangled Skimmers, our only local dragonflies to sport two-toned spots called "stigmas" on their wings, illustrates what I'm referencing. The male, who is largely blue, is in front, while the lighter-colored female is behind, and they are engaged in a typical breeding posture in which the male grabs the female's head with special claspers at the end of his abdomen and she, duly subdued, bends her abdomen to lock into a special sperm transfer area on the underside of his thorax. It has no human equivalent, not even in the most exotic parts of the Kama Sutra, but clearly, it works for them.