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Photo#62894
Familiar Bluet? - Argia translata

Familiar Bluet? - Argia translata
Leakey, Texas, Uvalde County, Texas, USA
July 9, 2006
Not sure on this one, anyone?

Definitely an Argia...
But it's tricky here...I've pulled out Abbott's book as well as my own images (which he IDed for me a month or so ago.)

However, I think this is a Dusky, and this is the unofficial way I tell them apart (note: unofficial)...as they mature, they pruinose "oppositely" of each other. Duskys are dark above, pale below; Powdered, when younger, are just as dark a blue low on the thorax...and then they get pale on top. We can't really see the face in this image but again, Duskys start out with a pale front of head and darken with age, while Powdered start with a dark head that pruinoses to pale with age. I haven't seen enough of both species through their adult life to know if there's a point at which the patterns "cross over" (each one moving toward its mature coloration) and they look identical.

If this one in life looked almost black from a little distance, then sort of midnight blue, but underlit (the underside of the thorax a cool grey), that would be like the Duskys I saw earlier in the summer. And if it was jittery and difficult to approach to photograph, that's the right behavior.

For a definitive answer, I'd contact Dr. Abbott at UT, perhaps via Odonata Central, which he runs.

I need to buy the Texas book!
I would try the Dancers (Argia).

 
Same as the other?
Powdered or Dusky? Who's buyin' that Texas book?

 
I'm going to ask Santa for it this year
I will admit I have seen only a handful of Duskies in person. But I have seen scores of Powedered Dancers of all ages at various locations across the East, plus illustrations in several books and on websites including this one, and I have NEVER seen one with the striking purple eyes illustrated so beautifully in this and several other of Jason's photos. Seems like a pretty simple ID to me. What I need the Texas book for is to tell me if there is some other confusing species, or a local variation of Powdered that makes the ID tougher somehow.

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