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Anyone who’s collected at light traps probably has seen the occasional dragonfly come in and wreak havoc – buzzing loudly and bouncing against the bulb and sheet. Odonata are not typically active at night, but they do get drawn in by the allure of the light. It’s a phenomenon documented haphazardly in the literature and might be worth a synthesis at some point. Anyone up for an armchair paper?
Our namesake, Stuart W. Frost, spent a lot of time at the Archbold Biological Station in Florida during the 1950s and 1960s, and light trapping was apparently one of his favorite pastimes. He recorded a number of dragonfly species, both in his notes and by collecting specimens. These notes and specimens were organized a bit by George Beatty and partially synthesized but never published. Rather than keep this knowledge locked away in our filing cabinets we thought we’d liberate them for anyone who can make use of the records. We did this once already by uploading the Beatty Mexico expedition field notes to figshare.com, which worked really well. For the Odonata light trapping notes we decided to try out Penn State’s own ScholarSphere repository service. Here are links the files:
- Odonata at lights, 1959–1963
- Odonata at lights, 1963–1965
- Odonata at lights, 1966–1969
- literature notes about Odonata at lights, part 1
- literature notes about Odonata at lights, part 2
The two literature notes files are especially interesting to us. They’re comprised of scanned note cards about references to Odonata at lights in various publications, like this one:
Bick, G (1949). Night collections of dragonflies (Odonata: Anisoptera). Entomological News 60 (7): 182.
We’d love to get your feedback, especially if these documents are useful or you have questions about the data!
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