Studying damselfly larvae behavior

After discussing the lack of knowledge of damselfly larvae in class, I thought it would be interesting to do a little research on what little is known.  Interestingly, I found an article discussing both of the aspect we discusses: the difficulty in studying larvae and what they were able to discover about damselfly larvae.  Double win!

They observed these behaviors by capturing them and setting up a controlled environment.  For a set time, a live observer would video tape the larvae's behavior, followed by a recording their behavior without a live observer.  By distinguishing different behaviors, they were able to track how many times the larvae performed each behavior.

Description of observed behaviors.

By studying their behavior both in person and with cameras the biggest thing they realized was that in the presence of humans, their behavior changes.  This is most likely due to them assuming humans are predators.

Although this is very eye opening on how to study damselfly larvae in the future, it would be interesting to see how this technique could be adapted to studying them in the wild.  Also, it is very possible that their behavior will vary greatly between a controlled environment and their natural environment.  It would also be interesting to compare their behavior when in the presence of the human "predator" and an actual predator in the wild to conclude whether or not their behavior was truly changing because they thought the observer was a predator.

Below is a prime example of how video recording can capture amazing behavior!

Here is the link to the article:

http://za2uf4ps7f.search.serialssolutions.com.proxy1.cl.msu.edu/directLink?&atitle=Technique+and+observer+presence+affect+reporting+of+behavior+of+damselfly+larvae&author=Baker%2C+R+L%3BMcGuffin%2C+MA&issn=0887-3593&title=Journal+of+the+North+American+Benthological+Society&volume=26&issue=1&date=2007-03-01&spage=145&id=doi:10.1899%2F0887-3593%282007%29262.0.CO%3B2&sid=ProQ_ss&genre=article

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