Dragonflies attack boys breeding

For freshwater boys, reproduction is really a heavy thing. Today, zoologists have discovered yet another burden that the son of reproductive life in the Taxas region suffers. It was an unexpected attacker, eating meat from inside his son. It has the scientific name Popenaias popeii.

The mother's tension begins when the fertilized egg enters the tubes inside the shell and develops into larvae (glochidia). Glochidia reduces water circulation, restricts oxygen and feed supplies. In the end, they enter the life of the parasite and need to move to the host fish body. Therefore, females often release their glochidia into the water, enveloping these glochidia in a mucus network and hoping that a fish will swim across and pick up some of them.

The dragonfly (top) larvae are capable of causing gill lesions (arrows) for freshwater mussels in the Taxas region.(Photo: Dan Williams, NMDGF)

During pregnancy, boys are vulnerable to parasite or crustacean injuries, vertebrate predators. However, during the New Mexico study, Todd D. Levine and adviser David J. Berg of the University of Miami at Hamilton, Ohio and colleagues found an attacker other than the species mentioned above.Dragonfly larvae Gomphus militaris attacks the gills and larvae (glochidia) of pregnant males in Taxas . The team continues to find many pregnant boys also in the same state of injury.

People still do not know how insects, as both parasites on females and eating larvae, have affected the survival of freshwater mussels in the Taxas region. However, researchers are still searching.

The research results are detailed in American Midland Naturalist.