Courtesy of Carrie Stevenson, UF/IFAS Extension Escambia County
Before we sold the original 4-H property to Navy Federal, the entire office of Escambia County Extension agents regularly hosted school field trips at the 4-H camp. It had a huge auditorium, forested areas, pitcher plant bogs, and a pond. Depending on our area of expertise, we’d set up stations all around for the kids to move through—nutrition educators teaching lessons on food at the kitchen, livestock experts with the animals near a pen, and natural resource agents by the pond or the woods. I typically manned a station down at the pond, where kids used dip nets to reach into the mud and bring out bugs, plants, fish—and the occasional snake! The “new” 4-H camp in Barrineau Park still hosts year-round youth activities, and a pond is in the works so we can recapture some of that waterfront fun.
Outside of the rare snake, the dragonfly larvae left the biggest impression on students. As babies, these species are a little crazy looking. They resemble spiders more than the sleek dragonfly form we all know and love. After recovering from the initial “ick” factor of the leggy invertebrates, most kids quickly appreciated what they were looking at. Even more fascinating is these very hungry nymphs can eat just about anything, from mosquito larvae to small frogs and fish!
The other point I always drove home during the field outings was that immature dragonflies, typically known as naiads, in a pond are bioindicators of good water quality. Biologists study and sample benthic macroinvertebrates (aka insects and worms living in the bottom of a water body, visible without a microscope) in streams and lakes to determine their health. In low oxygen and polluted water, the only things you’ll find are bloodworms and blackfly larvae, which can be found even in wastewater and raw sewage. Dragonflies, damselflies, and stoneflies are more sensitive to pollution, and will only live in clean, well-oxygenated water. This is an example of a concept in ecology called, “resource partitioning,” in which similar species evolve to thrive in vastly different habitats to avoid competition and take advantage of limited supplies of food and habitat.
