by Kevin Cummings, Messenger Staff Writer
About 50 feet away it hovers, hawking on this beginning-to-bake June morning. Robley Hood identifies the Great Blue Skimmer by its size, color and flying pattern as she sits beneath the pavilion in Abbo’s Alley.
The dragonfly bobs out and above us, staying close as if it knows we are talking about it and the rest of its cousins on the Domain. Hood is a citizen scientist, a woman who gets bundled up to protect against bugs, sun and snakes, and takes her camera to different bodies of water in Sewanee in search of odonates—dragonflies and damselflies.
“They are unbelievably beautiful,” she says. “Some of them are like looking at Tiffany stained glass windows, and you don’t see it unless you can get close up.”
“Dragonflies can see almost 360 degrees, and they don’t hear, so everything is visual. If someone comes up to it, they think it’s a predator. It’s real tricky; you have to learn how to stalk,” she adds.
Kirk Zigler, chair of Sewanee’s biology department, calls Hood’s work outstanding and says that as the climate changes, any observations collected today will be important in tracking how species distributions change over time.
“Dragonflies and damselflies are amazing creatures and she has made significant contributions to our understanding of local biodiversity by documenting species and their behaviors,” he says.
Hood has photographed and documented 36 different species of dragonflies in Sewanee, and 25 species of damselflies since she started her quest about four years ago.
“Citizen science is increasingly important in documenting biodiversity,” Zigler adds. “Digital photography, GPS and the Internet allow observations from around the globe to be stitched together into precise pictures of species distributions. Anyone with a passion for a particular bit of biodiversity can make a real contribution to understanding that group, and Robley’s project certainly exemplifies that.”
A literature and composition teacher who holds a doctorate in theatre history, Hood says she became interested in studying odonates after a walk around Lake Cheston with the late Harry Yeatman. Yeatman talked about different aspects of the lake environment and when they came to the metal bridge “there was an explosion of dragonflies.”
When Hood photographs and documents the existence of an odonate species, that information goes in the county record at Odonata Central, a website that stores information on dragonflies and damselflies. Recently Hood discovered a Unicorn Clubtail in Sewanee, a dragonfly that hadn’t been previously recorded in Franklin County, as well as two damselflies, the Sweetflag Spreadwing and the Spotted Spreadwing.
A change in the University’s mowing pattern around “in-town lakes,” such as Lake Cheston, Lake Bratton, Lake Finney and Lake Gregg, has improved the odonate habitat and led to an increase in dragonflies and damselflies.
“We altered the mowing plan last spring to provide additional vegetation along the lake edge for increased water quality and soil stability, to provide additional habitat, and to reduce mowing labor and materials,” says William Shealy, grounds manager for Sewanee’s Physical Plant Services. “Robley says this has made a big difference in the number and variety of species she is seeing.”
Without the new mowing pattern, Hood says she would never have seen the Arrowhead Spiketail at Lake Cheston, a rare dragonfly in Sewanee.
She notes that a small pond on the way to Lake Dimmick is her “honey hole,” and has a wider variety of species than any other body of water on the Domain.
To view photos and information about Odonata in Sewanee, visit Hood’s website at <https://sites.google.com/site/sewaneeodonates/home> or her blog at <mydailysnap.blogspot.com>.
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