Part of the graduation program at MSUM required that we complete a capstone research program. It’s basically an undergrad thesis. Since I was graduating with an Evolution and Ecology degree, I wanted to conduct my own research on animal behavior. The test organism was Anax junius and the study criteria was conspecific cue and their reaction to it.

There was ongoing research going on between MSUM and another university to show that conspecific cue affected the behavior of fish. MSUM researchers found that adding mashed fish of the same species to the water induced fewer movements when food was present, which indicates the fish may be reacting to the cue in the water that a predation event had occurred nearby and that they should seek avoidance tactics to stay out of harms way.

I was intrigued by this research, so I decided I would do the same style of experiment on Anax junis, the green darner dragonfly. Aquatic systems are easy to use this cue in, so I collected many wild a. junius larvae and put them in plastic tubs with filtered water. A grid with small, but visible holes, was placed underneath each tub so we could record if a movement or feeding strike occurred.

The experiment started by introducing mashed up  a. junius bodies via a syringe, and then worms were placed nearby the larvae and all movement was recorded for a set amount of time. I was able to get lots of student volunteers to help me collect data, so I had a good data set to start running some numbers on.

Here are the documents and presentations associated with this study. Please feel free to read them.

dfly measurements
Dragonfly Data
EEB – Final Paper
EEB – stat analysis full
EEB proposal
SAC 08 Presentation – EEB research – Dfly