Bean Lady: A light dancer on the side of the water

Text/Zhu Tao Photo/Web Photo

Early summer has arrived. On long rainy days, next to overgrown ponds, by the rushing streams, you can inadvertently find little creatures that look like dragonflies and hide grasses — either flying low, or stopping among leaves and flowers, leisurely and silently. This small life is generally called "Damselfly", and it is also called "Seven Girls". In fact, its scientific name was originally called "cockroach", which belongs to the order Dragonfly, suborder Lepidoptera, mostly living in the humid climate of mountains and rivers and lakes and swamps, but where there is water and grass, they can be seen.

In childhood, I often loved to play in the valley with my playmates, and the most loved to capture were these colorful little bean girls. At that time, I often mistook the idle bean lady for a particularly petite species of dragonflies, until I read the atlas of insects, I really distinguished them, and I knew that they were close relatives with dragonflies.

Generally speaking, the shape of the bean lady is slender compared to the dragonfly, the shape of the front and back wings is very small, and it is often not good at long-distance travel; while the dragonfly is more muscular, the shape of the front and back wings is quite different, and the flight is even more masterful, and can fly thousands of kilometers across the sea. Another point is that when the bean lady perches, it will close its wings on the back, while the wings of the dragonfly will be flattened.

From the distance between the two compound eyes, Dou Niang's eyes are very open, and the whole head is like a dumbbell; the dragonfly's eyes are next to each other, and the head is spherical.

Their tails also vary, with the bean lady being 6 to 7 times longer than the entire body, while the dragonfly is shorter. In addition, the belly of the bean lady is round and thin, and the belly of the dragonfly is thick and flat.

Douniang is a hydrophilic insect that prefers to live near the waters. This is more or less related to its reproduction. In summer and autumn, if you walk by the stream, it is easy to see two bean maidens flying in front of each other and one after the other, or overlapping up and down. And this is the most important task they have to accomplish in their lives.

Bean Lady's love affair is very interesting. In order to attract a mate, the male bean lady must find a calm water for spawning, and in the water, there must be aquatic grass for hiding. If found, the wings will be closed one by one to send a message to the nearby companions, and the female mother bean lady will also flap her wings to echo.

Of course, there are exceptions. In Costa Rica, the world's largest waterfall bean, which can spread its wings for up to 20 centimeters, prefers to challenge at the edge of the steep waterfall, which does not require large areas of water, as long as there is some water in the trunk, the eggs laid can hatch.

Male bean lady, reproductive organs are located in the abdomen, what about female bean lady? At the end of its tail, the female will bend her abdomen when mating, so that the bodies of both sides are closed into a "heart" shape. After mating, the two-body fly until the eggs are laid before they are separated.

Like dragonflies, Dou Niang also reproduces by water. They lay their eggs in water or inject them directly into the stems of plants such as aquatic plants.

The larvae finally broke through the "cocoon", and these larvae were called "water bugs". "Ant" is a poisonous insect like a scorpion, so named after it, roughly referring to the fact that the cubs of the bean lady have strong attack ability. And the truth is just as the author guessed. These larvae breathe on gills to catch planktonic arthropods or aquatic insects. The lower lip of the waterhopper resembles a mask, which is their predation tool. Its shape is like a bowl for beggars, so people are jokingly called "water beggars". The baby worms of the bean lady spend about a year in the water before migrating to land.

In the sparkling stream, a group of beings known as "water ants" are lazily enjoying the golden sunshine of summer afternoons. But not all of Dou Niang's children are so lucky. Natural selection is always an unbreakable law of nature. During the hatching process, fish and birds become their greatest natural enemies. Many insect eggs, before they are "feathered into butterflies", have become the "meal on the plate" for fish and birds. What's more, even a species named "parasitic wasp" is looking for an opportunity to get off the hook. Female wasps will patiently gather at the bottom of the bean's lower abdomen and quietly wait for the opportunity to come. They hide under the body of the bean lady, and once the bean lady has finished laying eggs, they act quickly and lay their eggs in the eggs of the bean lady to achieve the purpose of "magpie nest dove occupation".

Bean lady is an early-rising insect. When the sun was rising and the sky was just whitening, they had already woken up from their sleep, shook off the crystal dew on their bodies, and began to show their petite shadows. Of course, the bean lady is generally active in the morning and evening, and at noon, she will hide in a cool place to recuperate and store energy.

Many times, the bean lady is playing happily, and the beautiful seven girls, in this silent wilderness, are full of curiosity about everything. When someone comes, they will hide mischievously in the grass and probe the world. Their legs, clinging to the grass stems, try to shield their bodies and wings. But he didn't realize that the two big eyes had already exposed their whereabouts. Shuttling through the grass, Dou Niang has another purpose, that is, to find their "three meals". Like the larvae in the living water, the adult bean lady is also a carnivore. They have chewing mouthpieces and are good at preying on flying insects in the air. Like mosquitoes, flies and aphids, wood lice, planthoppers, mesozoites, etc., these small pests with weak activities are all dishes on the plate of Bean Lady. Of course, as part of the food chain, their situation is also quite dangerous. Larger dragonflies will prey on The Bean Lady, and occasionally, the hungry Bean Lady will also be able to kill each other, but such a scene is only accidental in the world of the Bean Lady.

Bean Lady is very adaptable. Although it lives mainly in temperate zones, the animal is also commonly seen in Tanzania's Dar es Salaam Bay, which has a savannah climate. In terms of hardiness, in the Arctic regions such as Norway and Finland at minus 30 °C, they can also adapt to the environment. From spring to autumn, from flat land to middle-altitude mountains, as long as there is water, the bean lady can survive. Therefore, their families are very large. There are about 2800 species of bean girls in the world, which is the largest family in the order Dragonfly, and about 50 species are found in China.

This is a very beautiful insect, in terms of body color, red, yellow, blue, etc., colorful, some also have a metallic luster, so that you can not help but feel pity. Taking the blue bean lady as an example, its body color is the purest sky blue in the world, and it is no less than the blue kingfisher, and even more crystalline and clear. Many insect lovers have a preference for the bean lady, and the degree of obsession even exceeds the favorite color butterfly. And photographers, there are also many who use Douniang as an ideal subject for ecological photography, through macro, to show the outstanding style of these light dancers.

The bean lady is beautiful, it does not belong to the ostentatious insects, but it is cold and arrogant, on the side of the water, dancing softly at will, in the hot summer, revealing a cool meaning of calm and leisure, so that the whole season is no longer hot...