The disparate requirements between their nymph and adult stages mean that dragonflies are dependent on both terrestrial and aquatic habitats, which have been increasingly modified in the face of anthropogenic activity. The results of the study should prove informative for managers working to preserve genetic diversity in connected dragonfly metapopulations, especially in the face of increasing anthropogenic landscape changes. This study provides a better understanding of local dragonfly metapopulation structure and provides a starting point for future studies to investigate the spatial and temporal mechanisms controlling metapopulation structure. These results suggest that both dispersal and a temporal cycle of emergence of nymphs from unique clusters every other year could be influential in structuring dragonfly populations, although our methods were not able to fully distinguish the influences of either force. The results of these confirmed findings from STRUCTURE and emphasized differences between adults collected in 2012 and all other generations. We also evaluated grouping using the statistical clustering analyses NMDS and MRPP. STRUCTURE detected k = u4 populations, in which nymphs and adults from the same locations collected in different years did not necessarily fall into the same clusters. We performed AFLP genetic analysis and used the Bayesian analysis program STRUCTURE to detect genetic clusters from sampled individuals.

We sampled 97 nymphs and 149 adult Sympetrum obtrusum from eight locations, four aquatic, and four terrestrial, at the Pierce Cedar Creek Institute in Southwest Michigan over two summers. We used genetic techniques to examine nymphs and adults within a single metapopulation both spatially and temporally to better understand metapopulation structure and the processes that might influence said structure.

Dragonflies reside in both aquatic and terrestrial environments, depending on their life stage, necessitating the conservation of drastically different habitats however, little is understood about how nymph and adult dragonflies function as metapopulations within connected habitat.

Dragon’s Egg by Lena Austin