D amselflies are a focus of research for the
entomology program in Stephenville, Texas. Using a recently published book,
'Damselflies of North America' by Minter Westfall
and Michael May, we have been able to determine which damselflies should
be in our vicinity. The authors list 161 species, of which 65 are found in Texas and 23
that should be in north-central Texas. A Texas checklist
has been assembled and can be found on this website under CHECKLIST,
or on our FTP site in WordPerfect 6.1 format; the host name of the
computer is stephenville.tamu.edu, and the directory where the checklist
resides is /pub/damselfly.
Several authors have published on Texas damselflies, and two of them (Clifford Johnson in 1972 and R. W. Garrison in 1994) have information on species distribution by county. Using their records and our own more limited collection data, distribution maps for 53 of the 65 species are presented here.
Unlike the dragonflies, not all the damselflies hold their color
when chilled, a prerequisite to scanning. (The scanning technique may be
found on the Digital
Dragonfly Page). The Argia are especially susceptible to color
loss. One method to circumvent this, although not available to everyone,
is to anesthetize the specimens with CO2. Fortunately, damselflies are
easier subjects to photograph than are dragonflies. Our goal on this web
site is to collect both scans and photographs of damselflies from central Texas
and to present available collection data in map form. The data are
also being presented via an experimental bioinformatics engine in collaboration
with Dr. John Oswald, curator of the Entomology
Museum at Texas A&M University.
Photos by:
Robert A. Behrstock
James L. Lasswell
John Seibel
Curtis E. Williams
Scans by:
James L. Lasswell
HTML Programming & Site Maintenance:
Sadie J. Dove
Larissa M. Heimer
James L. Lasswell
Forrest L. Mitchell
Leah E. Wickersham
Network Assistance:
John Roemer
Hardware & Software Support, Late Night Panic Intercepts
Paul Sittler
