Seaside dragonlet

The seaside dragonlet is a small, slim dragonfly that lives by the sea. Grown-up males are black, with eyes that are dark red on top and light green below. It has a superpower: its babies can grow up in salty seawater.

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Fun facts
It is the only dragonfly in the Americas that can breed in seawater.
In a lab test, its babies survived water more than two and a half times saltier than the sea.
Females come in many colours, often bright orange with black stripes.
Pairs fly together and even lay their eggs together, usually into floating mats of seaweed.
In one study in a Maine salt marsh, it spent 99 out of every 100 minutes sitting on plants.
Most asked questions about Seaside dragonlet
?Can dragonflies live in salt water?
Most cannot, but the seaside dragonlet can. Its babies grow up in salty marshes and mangroves.
?How big is the seaside dragonlet?
It is about 31 to 35 millimetres long.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Erythrodiplax berenice
- Group
- Dragonflies and damselflies
- Family
- Libellulidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Odonata > Libellulidae
- Lives on
- North America
Where the facts come from
- Erythrodiplax berenice (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 Andrew Cannizzaro. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this 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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