CHAPTER XIII 



JUAN VINAS THE TENANTS OF BROMELIADS 



Up to the time of our arrival in Costa Rica the larvae of 

 these large Anormostigmatine dragonflies, referred to in the 

 closing paragraphs of the preceding chapter, were unknown. 

 Mr. O. W. Barrett, who collected for me in Mexico in 1897 

 and 1898, made the suggestion ^ that possibly their larvae 

 lived in the large water-retaining bases of bromeliads. Re- 

 membering this we had looked for dragonfly larvae in some 

 bromeliads near Cartago, without success. Indeed there is 

 as yet no reason to think that species of Mecistogaster or 

 Megaloprepus exist there, the altitude being perhaps too 

 high. Mr. Frederick Knab, of the U. S. National Museum 

 at Washington, wrote us under date of August 5, 1909, "In 

 the course of my mosquito work in the tropics I investigated 

 the water between the leaves of the epiphyte Bromeliaceae 

 and found that besides mosquito larvae there was a rich in- 

 sect fauna. The winter of 1907-8 was spent at Cordoba, 

 Mexico, and there I found that nearly every bromeliid in- 

 vestigated contained dragonfly larvae. I was not prepared 

 to rear Odonata but I finally did succeed in breeding out a 

 couple of rather large, unfortunately crippled, Agrionids." 

 Mr. Knab's letter determined us to make more persistent 

 search in the bromeliads of the warmer parts of Costa Rica. 



The pineapple is the most familiar example of this family 

 of plants but many of the other members are epiphytic. 

 Such are the Tillandsias, or Spanish mosses, which form 

 long gray-green festoons both in tropical and sub-tropical 



^Entomological Nezvs, XI, p. 601, Philadelphia, November, 1900. 



