“Our whole ecosystem, everything is connected. “One of the biggest things you can do is reduce the amount of pesticides that you use so that they’re not exposed to them, just like everything else,” Donahue said. “It’s just having lots of different things there that will attract other insects that will be flying so the dragonflies can go after them,” Charlene Donahue, retired entomologist for the Maine Forest Service, said.Īlso, Donahue said to stop using pesticides - even those used to keep mosquitoes at bay - if you want to create an attractive space for dragonflies. There are no flowers themselves that are particularly attractive to dragonflies because they are more interested in their prey. “If you go out, you will see dragonflies sitting on goldenrod, Queen Anne’s lace or petunias.” “The best thing I could say is to have a good variety of flowers,” Dill said. The first step to attracting dragonflies to your land is to make your yard more hospitable to insects in general by planting a diversity of flowers in your garden that will attract the bugs that dragonflies like to eat.
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“Other natural predators were dipping into those pools just as much as the dragonflies.” How to attract dragonflies to your yard “We found no significant effect of dragonfly nymphal predation on mosquito larvae,” deMaynadier said. Plus, importing dragonflies doesn’t work to control mosquitoes, according to a study deMaynadier co-authored in 2020 using baby pools filled with dragonfly nymphs in a controlled forest setting. “We don’t know what other consequences when you introduce high quantities of a top predator into the state,” deMaynadier said. These practices can bring invasive species into Maine, especially considering that the biological supply companies are all based out-of-state and provide species of Odonata that are not native to Maine. Mainers should also resist the urge to import dragonfly nymphs from biological supply companies to manage mosquitoes, which deMaynadier said has been a common practice for some towns and land trusts in the southern part of the state, as well as for private landowners, for the last 40 years. “It’s a good thing to have in your yard.”īe warned, though: attracting dragonflies will not solve your mosquito ills.
“Dragonflies get used to people, and if you’re outside, they’ll hover right in front of your face and pick off,” Jim Dill, pest management specialist at the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, said. Dragonflies and mosquitoesĭragonflies’ insatiable appetite for mosquitoes, black flies and other flying insects make them appealing to homeowners looking to control pest populations in their yard. Both, though, are spectacular aerial acrobats that will dine ravenously on mosquitoes, black flies and other flying nuisances.
“Some people think that damselflies are female dragonflies, which is kind of a cute and charming thought, but it’s not true,” deMaynadier said.ĭamselflies are generally thinner and hold their wings folded in when they land, as opposed to out like an airplane as dragonflies do. Phillip deMaynadier, wildlife biologist at the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (MDIFW), said that the first thing to note is that when people say “dragonflies,” they are almost always talking about the insects in the order Odonata, which includes both dragonflies and their close cousins, damselflies.
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