Ebony jewelwing
The ebony jewelwing is a damselfly with dark wings and a shiny body. The boy has a metal blue green body and black wings, like a little flying jewel. The girl is brown with smoky wings and a white spot near each wing tip.
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Fun facts
Its baby is called a naiad and lives under water. When it is grown, it climbs out and sheds its skin to become a damselfly.
The mother lays her eggs inside the soft stems of water plants.
It lives near streams, but it can fly far away from the water.
In some warm places you can see it almost all year round.
Most asked questions about Ebony jewelwing
?Is the ebony jewelwing a dragonfly?
Not quite. It is a damselfly, a slimmer cousin of the dragonflies.
?What does the ebony jewelwing eat?
Small flying insects such as mosquitoes and gnats. Its babies hunt tiny animals under water.
?How big is the ebony jewelwing?
It is about 4 to 6 centimetres long.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Calopteryx maculata
- Group
- Dragonflies and damselflies
- Family
- Calopterygidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Odonata > Calopterygidae
- Lives on
- North America
- Also known as
- Black-winged damselfly
Where the facts come from
- Ebony jewelwing (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by D. Gordon E. Robertson. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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