Gotcha!

Precisely because they are full of pitfalls, swamps offer splendid refuge to those adept at sidestepping sinkholes. For dragonflies and other insects, a watery pit makes a good breeding site, and a thin skin of marshy soil makes for an easy landing pad. Still, not every surface is safe. The Eastern pondhawk dragonfly (Erythemis simplicicollis), pictured here, fell prey to another peril of swamp life: the trap set by an insectivorous sundew plant.

The Green Swamp Preserve, near Bolivia, North Carolina, sprawls across some 16,000 acres of shrubby bog land surrounded by pine savannas. That unusual ecosystem boasts at least fourteen species of plants that feast on live insects. It may be the most diverse carnivorous plant reserve in the world--one reason Jack Dermid, a photographer and self-proclaimed outdoor wanderer, regularly hikes there.

Dermid was on the fringe of the swamp one late-summer afternoon when he noticed a resting dragonfly. On closer inspection he realized a spatulate-leaf sundew (Drosera intermedia) had the hapless insect ensnared in its sticky tentacles--tied down as securely as Gulliver was by the Lilliputians. The sundew was already draining the juicy carcass of its nitrogen supply.

Was the pondhawk new to the hazards of Green Swamp? Perhaps. Recent research shows that dragonflies migrate great distances--as far as ninety-three miles in a day. Whether visitor or denizen, though, this one didn't make it out of the labyrinth alive.

COPYRIGHT 2006 Natural History Magazine, Inc.
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