Transcript

Picture yourself perched on a dry plant stem, a few dozen centimeters above the calm, warm water. The sun shines through the canopy on your freshly spread wings, warming up the hemolymph you vigorously pumped in them through a myriad of veins. You just emerged from a pond in a south Vietnamese forest, and you are a recently adult dragonfly.

[Southern Vietnamese soudscape fades in. You can hear cicadas and birds, but the most striking are the calls of gibbons echoing around.]

Hi and welcome back to the Insect Insights for a second season and some more chill insect stories to relax and wonder. If you like this podcast, you can subscribe, leave a review and even an insect question, on spotify or on the website. You will find the links in the shownotes, along with useful sources for this story. There are many of you listening from Vietnam, and I hope you are happy to see some of your native biodiversity be featured! I am Max, your host, and I hope you are ready to dive into insect knowledge for another insight!

The morning is beautiful in the forest. You have been out of the water long enough for the sun to appear above the treeline, reaching you. Its light touches your big round compound eyes, and its warmth is about to finish readying you for your first ever flight. As you flex the powerful muscles in your thorax, you see all four of your long wings flutter. It feels like your muscles are ready to carry you in the air and away from the pond where you spent your entire nymph life.

In a gush of warm wind, you fly away, clumsily at first. After all, these are your first wingbeats. Let’s hope no predator seizes this opportunity to end your journey earlier than you would like… Luckily, your body and wings are flashing rather dull colors, for now. It’s all pale browns and rusty yellows, and you actually blend pretty well into the high mound of dirt you just landed on.

Your inconspicuous look doesn’t only protect you from predators, it also prevents you from being targeted by other males from your species. With your large eyes and the wide vision field they provide, you catch sight of one of them flying right passed you. Even though you are in the light, it doesn’t care at all about you. You are not yet wearing the distinctive colors of mature males, hence you don’t even register as a competitor.

On this mound around you, you notice a more direct problem: A small black insect, walking in your direction. And another, next to it. And then some more, coming from all directions! They are dark, with big heads and large sharp mandibles. They are walking towards you at a fast pace, apparently ready to attack. It seems like you landed on a Macrotermes nest, which means it’s time to leave!

Your thoracic muscles were still warm from the earlier flight, allowing you to take off very fast, and instantly start chasing an unlucky fly. This prey is no match for your flying skills now, and in a second, you catch it in your legs. Your powerful mandibles start chewing. Your metabolism is getting fast now that you need to fly, and you definitely welcome a snack.

This is the first meal of your adult life. Away from the pond and deeper in the forest, you will probably find good hunting grounds to ensure this won’t be your last. But in time, you will most likely head back to a body of water. As a dragonfly, this is where mating happens, and you will have to find yourself a territory to defend.

Along with the maturing of your sex organs, there’s also a new chemical process starting in your body. You might be adult, but this is not your final form. Over the next dozen days, as you get ready to mate, your style will come to show that! Your colors, still in their infancy now, are slowly shifting. Due to a simple chemical reaction happening to your ommochromes, the pigments in your epidermal cells, your entire body is transitioning from this dull yellow to a strong, dark, fulvous red. Your wings will get particularly noticeable.

Once you are fully ripe, let’s aim to find a territory with a nice perching spot in the light, to flaunt the vibrant colors you are cooking, if you will?

Sources

Futahashi, R. (2016). Color vision and color formation in dragonflies. Current Opinion in Insect Science, Global Change Biology * Molecular Physiology, 17, 32–39. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cois.2016.05.014

Futahashi, R., Kurita, R., Mano, H., & Fukatsu, T. (2012). Redox alters yellow dragonflies into red. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(31), 12626–12631. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1207114109

Phan, Q. T., Nguyen, H. N., & Dinh, K. V. (2026). Vietnamese Odonata: Bridging global biodiversity, ecological, and conservation gaps in a changing world. Npj Biodiversity, 5(1), 12. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44185-026-00124-x