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This book is the first to allow you to experience the details of the ultra-fast lives of dragonflies, these large, beautiful flying insects, through an abundance of unique snapshots and image sequences. Dragonflies are world champions of flight, bionic wonders; they reveal much about the mysteries of evolution. We witness their social interaction, and appreciate their success over three hundred million years. Dragonflies are easy to observe, even for beginners. About 80 species live in Germany, and every body of water is home to a few. They are not shy, do not sting and often come very close. The two authors have been studying them for over 30 years and with the knowledge in this book, you will look at dragonflies in a completely novel way.
- Appearance
- Eyes
- Wings
- Flight artists
- Turning flight
- Colored wings
- Catching prey
- Fighting
- Defense of males
- Interspecific discord
- Colors
- Threatening
- Mating
- Oviposition
- Larvae
- Hunting
- Hatching
- Maiden flight
- Ecological significance
- Response to climate change
Georg Rüppell was a professor of behavioural ecology at the Technical University of Braunschweig and supervised over 300 studies with his working group, many of them on dragonflies. It was the quick-reaction training he got through his teenage sporting activities, he finds, that helped him to be constantly alert to the abrupt flight movements around him. He was the first biologist in the world to take up the field study of bird flight using slow-mo, and subsequently apply his expertise to dragonflies. He met his wife Dagmar Hilfert-Rüppell on a research trip to the dragonflies of Japan.
Dagmar Hilfert-Ruppell has been studying and filming dragonflies for 30 years. She is particularly fond of damselflies, about which she wrote her doctoral thesis. She has developed infinite patience when filming to capture new behaviours in close-up. She is also the inspired driving force behind their numerous trips all around the world.
