(WBBM NEWSRADIO) — If you were out at the Chicago Air and Water Show this weekend, you may have caught sight of something else in the air: swarms of dragonflies.
A local insect expert said the large numbers are due to native green darner dragonflies combining with those migrating south to warmer weather.
“They’re always around, but it’s only a short period of time where we have so many that are passing through all at the same time,” said Allen Lawrence.
Lawrence, the curator of entomology at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, said while they’ve been spotted along the lakefront, they don’t generally lay their eggs there.
“What they prefer are ephemeral ponds and wetlands that may dry out during the year and that don’t have many fish or other predators in there to eat them,” he said.
If you see a dragonfly, it’s often a good thing because they don’t bite humans and they eat mosquitoes.
Lawrence called them voracious predators that eat both mosquito larvae and adults, as well as other small, flying insects.
He said there are about 60 dragonfly species in the world that migrate but scientists have only recently started to understand their patterns.
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