Federally Endangered Dragonflies Raised In Captivity for Four Years to Be

This week a small batch of endangered dragonflies are to be released after being raised for five years in captivity. These federally endangered dragonflies were released at a forest preserve last week in Illinois.

The Hine’s emerald dragonflies were raised at the University of South Dakota after eggs were collected from a dragonfly in southwestern Wisconsin.

20 of these dragonflies could end up being released, and three already have been.

Endangered species coordinator at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Chicago Ecological Services Field Office Kristopher Lah said around 80 to 320 Hine’s emerald larvae survive to adulthood in Illinois annually, SFGATE has learned.

According to Daniel Soluk, a professor at United States dollars and the leader of the project, raising the animals in the lab can dramatically increase their numbers.

First discovered in Ohio in the mid-1990s, the Hine’s emerald dragonflies were believed by scientists to have been extinct. He says the effort is meant to preserve the species, which got the federally endangered label in 1995. The reason for using a dragonfly from southwest Wisconsin is that researchers noticed that it had the same diverse genetic composition as the endangered dragonflies that have been found in Illinois. Immature eggs known as nymphs, hatch from the eggs in the spring and live in water for almost two to four years.

The nymphs live in the water until they are ready to crawl out of their coverings and develop wings to fly as adults.

Scientists mentioned that it literally requires 4-5 a couple weeks between June and August regarding the individuals to stay at.

For decades, scientists believed the species to be extinct. He explains that in nature dragonflies have only 1% chance of reaching maturity, while in the tightly controlled environment of the University’s laboratories that chance goes up to 50%.

Since then, they have offered the eggs an artificial home, that came with plenty of nourishment and free of predators and the majority of predictable hazards.

“We never hardly ask ‘Why is the Mona Lisa important?’ We could tear it down, burn it, and would civilization collapse?”

“A small butterfly doesn’t really have any economic value and probably could go extinct and we’d never even know it. But I think there’s an obligation to our future generations of people that we try to preserve the Earth in at least as good a condition as we found it”, team ecologist Mike Grimm said.

The greatest threat to the Hine’s emerald dragonflies is the destruction of their habitat.