Welcome

Arizona has a great diversity of ecosystems ranging from arid deserts to artificial and natural bodies of water, wet alpine meadows, and conifer forests. This diversity is associated with a large variety of animals, especially insects and including odonates. And even though we already know a lot on odonates in Arizona, much remains to be learned and each of us can contribute to current knowledge on aspects of their natural history such as habitat use, geographic and seasonal distributions, behavior, and ecology. For naturalists, one particularly appealing aspect of studying odonates – and for this matter other living organisms - in Arizona is that the state is located just north of Mexico. Not surprisingly Arizona is, therefore, home to species that reach the northern limit of their geographic distribution and are found nowhere else - or almost so - in the United States.

This web site presents photographic documentation on odonate species that have been officially recorded in Arizona – both damselflies (suborder Zygoptera) and dragonflies proper (suborder Anisoptera). As is the case for just about all organisms, individual variation exists within each odonate species that is related not only to sex but also to age, geographic region, and other factors. We wanted to give an idea of this variation by showing multiple instead of just one or two pictures of each species. This is obviously a work in progress and more pictures – of species that are already shown on the web site as well as of species that I have not yet documented photographically - will be added as time goes by.

The web site will hopefully foster further interest in odonates by facilitating their identification, and stimulate additional observations related to their natural history. We hope that you will enjoy using azdragonfly.net and will learn from the information that it contains!