224 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 
United States ever eats them. Shrikes, cuckoos, and kingbirds, however, catch and 
eat the imagos, even after the wings of the latter have become fully hardened. Hence 
they are active enemies during the entire adult life of the dragonflies and cause con- 
siderable destruction. 
3. LARGER Imacos.—The imagos of the larger species are great enemies of the 
smaller species; this is especially true of the gomphids, of Anax, and of Erythemis. 
All of these were observed eating teneral damselflies and sometimes teneral dragonflies, 
and these seem to be the favorite food of the female gomphids. 
An editorial in Nature, volume 26, 1882, page 89, related a curious fact observed 
by Signor Stefanelli in regard to a dragonfly (schna cyanea) often met with near 
Florence. There were several nymphs of this species in a cistern of water. Some 
which were almost ready for transformation came out of the water a little way during 
the night, and attacked several teneral imagos which could not yet fly and voraciously 
devoured them. It was suggested that this singular practice may explain why one 
finds such a small number of schna cyanea in comparison with the number of nymphs. 
But this is more easily explained by the migration of the tenerals already described 
(p. 188), and we must regard such a practice as this as extremely exceptional rather than 
as an ordinary occurrence. 
4. ANTS, SPIDERS, ROBBER FLIEs, AND Frocs.—These also eat teneral dragonflies, 
and the spiders capture fully matured adults. Two tenerals of L. /uctwosa were eaten 
alive by a colony of black ants on the banks of pond 4. The ants seized them on all 
sides with their mandibles and tore them in pieces, dragging off the fragments to their 
nest. 
The webs of the common black and yellow spider, Argiope, are thickly scattered 
through the vegetation along the shores of the ponds, and from them the author secured 
many specimens of Ischnura verticalis, Enallagma civile, E. hageni, Argia putrida, and 
tenerals of Sympeirum rubicundulum, L. luctuosa, and Erythemis simplicicollis. Wil- 
liamson (1899, p. 236) has recorded a similar experience in Indiana. A large water 
spider, common around the shores of the ponds, also catches teneral dragonflies on the 
grass stems at the edge of the water. 
Williamson (1899, p. 235) noted a large robber fly carrying a teneral Sympetrum 
rubicundulum, which it had doubtless killed, and Dyche (1914, pp. 151 to 153) found 
dragonflies in the stomachs of several large bullfrogs. 
The little cricket frog, Acris gryllus, is also a confirmed eater of damselfly imagos. 
His usual roosting place is upon the floating algee at the surface of the water, where he 
watches for the damselflies when they come to deposit their eggs. When caught, the 
damselfly is much longer than the frog’s body, but the fatter swallows it slowly and keeps 
swallowing until it has entirely disappeared. 
5. Parasitic Mires aNnD FLies.—Tillyard (1917, p. 331) made the following 
statement: 
Dragonflies whose larve live in still water are frequently found covered with the young of a species 
of small red mites (family Hydrachnide). The adult probably attacks the dragonfly at metamorphosis, 
placing either its eggs or viviparous young on the under side of the thorax, the bases of the wings and legs, 
or the abdomen, to which they are afterwards found clinging. In this way the dragonfly is used asa 
means of dispersal by the Arachnid, and the young mites are carried from one pond to another, where 
some of them drop off. 
