Captive breeding of odonate larvae: Effects of type of water, handling, and sex

Abstract

In the last decades, much information about aquatic insects has been generated (Gullan & Cranston, 2014), but we lack basic information on life histories, ecology, and behaviour of aquatic stages in many species of Odonata, Ephemeroptera, Trichoptera, and Plecoptera (Del Claro, 2019). The life cycle of odonates (damselflies and dragonflies) is complex, with a prolonged larval aquatic stage (Lamelas-López et al., 2016;Palacino-Rodríguez et al., 2018) and a much shorter terrestrial adult phase (Corbet, 1999;Stoks & Córdoba-Aguilar, 2012). Even though the life cycle of many species of odonates has been investigated under natural conditions (reviewed by Corbet et al., 2006), it is challenging to include all larval stages in field studies, because the first instars are difficult to sample. If we know the instar, this can help to understand the effect of age and size on survival strategies and how this translates into ecological processes of individuals and populations. This information has great utility to the monitoring and conservation