One rule of thumb for distinguishing between dragonflies and damselflies is that at rest, the latter keep their wings folded above their backs. At least four families in Zygoptera, however, defy this habit, keeping their wings aspread like miniature gunships ready to sow terror among neighbourhood midges. Two families occur in Singapore, but none of their representatives are common and at least one has been snubbed out of local existence by the felling of alluvial forests for solid grounds.
Perhaps the most easily seen of these ravenous faeries is a powder blue dancer that clings to low reeds in the marshy fringes of reservoirs and the disturbed clearings of protected pools. The hyaline, markedly stalked wings are barely visible from afar and it's possible to visually brush aside the nub of a body as a flicker of dust amid stalks that seldom stay still and cloud the margins of soil and silt. Elsewhere, the spreadwings can turn up in numbers that resist ignorance, but here, the damselflies enjoy the pleasure of low density living on the few banks left alone to form gentle slopes of mud besedged by hairgrasses and pipeworts.
Another family of open-winged damselflies is restricted to sheltered habitats such as streams with a wealth of overhanging debris. Only one of this group is known from the island: a zygopterid in electric blue and slaty black found at times on twigs above semi-emphemeral ponds. In build, this hunter is noticeably heavier than its kin from exposed zones, and unlike Lestes, which hang at an angle from soft blades, megapodagrionids (which means 'large legged wild thing') stand erect on firmer perches.
The families also differ in venation: lestids have a number of five-sided semi-distal wing cells and there are crucial apomorphies in the origination of secondary veins. The nymphs, too, bear distinct caudal lamellae that help capture oxygen in the still puddles that provide food in the form of small aquatic arthropods and offer leafy strongholds from insectivorous fish. The litter of the woods, unlike that which arises from urban impulses, is wasted only on those who see no value in recycling the goodness of trees who give homes to birds in life and bugs in fall.
One authority on odonates describes the family as "dull-coloured' on average, but flatwings from Southeast Asia defy this stereotype with hues that sparkle in a dim apocalpyse of logs, roots and tannin-stained brooks. Rhinagrion, a genus with bold markings and shiny tips, is partial to jungle streams with steep banks and dense brush. Such habitats are still abundant in the few lowlands of Borneo that have not felt the blades of timber barons and the runoff of logged slopes. Not a few shadowed the waterways of the Maliau Basin, where they displayed flashes of rare brilliance in a conservation area hemmed and nicked by the appetites of a world unfazed by the loss of resources at rates that may outpace the possibility of rescue and belated restoration.
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