FLYING COLORS

HERE WE ARE, three men standing ankle-deep in the freshets of the Salt River and staring down at a lone damselfly sunning itself atop the rock at our feet. Hundreds, probably thousands, of other dragonflies and damselflies swirl all around as the bulrushes sway with the first gusts of an arriving monsoon storm.

The insects' slender bodies flash scarlet, neon green and cerulean in the sun, and even with the rugged, ruddy profile of the Goldfield Mountains rising to the east beyond the band of vegetation along the river, the boggy setting doesn't feel like it belongs in Arizona. I half-expect to see the baby Moses come floating by any second now.

Pierre Deviche, an Arizona State University professor of environmental physiology and self-taught dragonfly expert, has taken me to this spot as part of a crash course in the world of Arizona's odonates - the scientific name for dragonflies and damselflies, an order of insects that have been flitting about the Earth for more than 300 million years.

"When you look at a dragonfly, it's like looking at a living fossil," Deviche says. "They were one of the first flying insects and were around for 100 million years before the dinosaurs. Haven't changed very much since then."

Odonates debuted during the Carboniferous Period, a time when the planet was hotter and swampier - perfect conditions for dragonflies and damselflies. By that standard, Arizona would seem an unlikely home for 143 kinds of odonates, about one-third of the species found in the U.S. The species' names are as evocative as these insects are colorful: Mayan setwing, Yaqui dancer, desert firetail, cardinal meadowhawk.

The third member of our trio is Tommy DeBardeleben, an accomplished birder and avowed Phoenix Suns fanatic. Chance encounters would seem unlikely while sloshing around in a muddy backwater at high noon on a late-summer day in Arizona. But as Deviche pointed out one odonate after another, he suddenly called out, "Hey, Tommy!" I looked over to see a guy with a hint of actor Luke Wilson about him, dressed in black and carrying a camera and binoculars. DeBardeleben's website, birderfrommaricopa.com, details his birding experiences and discoveries around Arizona. His life list of U.S. birds is up to 608 species. But today, he's not looking for birds.

DeBardeleben had noticed an update on Deviche's website, Arizona Dragonflies (azdragonfly.org), that a day earlier, a male Tezpi dancer, a damselfly more typically found in the state's southeast corner, had been spotted here, along the Salt River. So DeBardeleben decided to come out and try to add to the Arizona life list of odonates he started a few years ago.

Deviche and DeBardeleben talk in the kind of verbal shorthand that people with shared expertise and passion can lapse into. They call the dragonflies and damselflies "odes," short for "odonates," and exchange cryptic observations.

"That's a big dancer."

"Yeah, that's a big dancer. It's a cool bug."

"It is."

DeBardeleben goes off in search of the Tezpi dancer as Deviche and I head in the other direction. Then, about 10 minutes later,DeBardeleben cries out: "I got him!"

Deviche and I walk back over, and there's the Tezpi dancer on the rock. Typical of damselflies, he's smaller than the dragonflies we've seen, slenderer and with wings folded against his body - a key tell when distinguishing the two kinds of odonates.

"This is pretty much where he was yesterday, give or take 20 feet," Deviche says. "I'm so glad you found him."

DeBardeleben grins broadly as he photographs the Tezpi dancer - his 99th Arizona odonate. "I love your website," he tells Deviche. "It's freaking badass. It's just phenomenal."

SO ODES TO "ODES" GO, “badass” is a perfectly fitting tribute to these insects, whose elegantly lethal design manages to be both primordial and futuristic, like some micro mash-up of pteranodons from Jurassic Park and X-wing starfighters from Star Wars. You get the sense that long after human beings have shuffled off this mortal coil, dragonflies and damselflies will still be zipping around the swamps, doing their thing.

“If they were not so advanced with their biology, they would have been long extinct by now,” Deviche says. “The fact that they have been around for so long, and havechanged so little, means that these are really well-adapted animals. And flexible as well. They have been able to adapt and survive all sorts of global events and climatic changes without going extinct.” With four independently operating wings controlled by separate sets of muscles, dragonflies can fly backward as easily as they fly forward. They hover like helicopters and reach speeds of up to 30 mph. Some are also marathoners, using a mix of flying and gliding to migrate thousands of miles while thousands of feet in the sky.

changed so little, means that these are really well-adapted animals. And flexible as well. They have been able to adapt and survive all sorts of global events and climatic changes without going extinct.” With four independently operating wings controlled by separate sets of muscles, dragonflies can fly backward as easily as they fly forward. They hover like helicopters and reach speeds of up to 30 mph. Some are also marathoners, using a mix of flying and gliding to migrate thousands of miles while thousands of feet in the sky.

Odonates’ vision is even more remarkable. Made up of 30,000 individual facets, compound eyes take up much of their heads and allow these insects to see virtually 360 degrees around them. Combine that with those flying skills, and odonates are formidable ambush predators, the Anton Chigurhs of the insect world. Their kill rate of more than 95 percent would shame great white sharks and Bengal tigers alike.

Odonates are formidable ambush predators, the Anton Chigurhs of the insect world. Their kill rate of more than 95 percent would shame great white sharks and Bengal tigers alike.

their heads and allow these insects to see virtually 360 degrees around them. Combine that with those flying skills, and odonates are formidable ambush predators, the Anton Chigurhs of the insect world. Their kill rate of more than 95 percent would shame great white sharks and Bengal tigers alike.

Growing up, you had to get past the idea that, despite their rather fearsome appearance, dragonflies weren't going to sting, nor were they venomous. With surprisingly strong jaws, however, the big dragonflies can bite (the order name, Odonata, comes from odonto, the Greek word for “tooth”). Then again, it would be all your fault, because you would have to actually hold a dragonfly for it to do any damage. Take it from DeBardeleben: “I caught an Apache dancer with my hand. Bit me and I got a little bump. But I never wanted that bump to go away.” The next level of odonate enlightenment came upon discovering that dragonflies and damselflies were good bugs that ate bad bugs, especially mosquitoes sometimes hundreds per day. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and for some of us, dragonflies began to inspire curiosity, not fear.

A native of Belgium who studied at Oregon State University and taught at the University of Alaska's Fairbanks campus before coming to ASU as an animal physiologist, Deviche says he had “never paid attention to dragonflies whatsoever. Literally zero.” But in 2005, he went birding with a friend from Phoenix who pointed out different dragonflies, and Deviche quickly became hooked. “Odonates seemed like a perfect opportunity to spend time outside, do photography and maybe learn a few new things along the way,” he says.

By 2010, he launched his Arizona Dragonflies website, an invaluable resource for anyone looking for information about the state's odonates. “It goes extremely long,” DeBardeleben says. “Every single odonate species that's ever been recorded in Arizona is on that website. Pierre puts helpful annotations on pictures pointing to features. You can identify the odonate by this field mark, or look at a certain point on its abdomen and compare it to a species that looks almost identical. He highlights every single identification factor you need to know for every species. He gave people a gift with that website.” The site helps fill gaps in the understanding of Arizona's dragonflies, which Deviche says not many people are studying. He not only records where the odonates range, but also tracks the early and late seasonal dates for observations, which may reveal changing behavioral patterns related to climate change. By comparison, he says, considerably more research of dragonflies and damselflies exists in Europe, where studies show that during the past 10 to 15 years, a growing number of African species have ranged north into Italy and Spain.

But Arizona remains a scientific and geographic frontier when it comes to odonates. “Living in a place like Arizona, we're on the front line of climate change,” Deviche says. “We have these species that are affected by global warming, and dragonflies that are essentially Mexican species [and] barely extend into Arizona.

“Well, I think it would be an interesting thing to see, long term, what happens with these animals, right? Are we going to see more Mexican species? That's part of the fun. To just go out and look for these things. But we have very little information of that kind. If you ask me for actual data, we really don't have that much yet.” Mysteries endure. Like the November 2016 sighting of a three-striped dasher near Dudleyville. It was that damselfly's northernmost appearance anywhere in the U.S. and the first time the insect had been observed in Arizona. “That was really surprising,” Deviche says. “You have to go 200, 300 miles into Sonora to see one. This is the only one ever found in Arizona. How does a damselfly like that fly over hundreds of miles to end up where we saw it?”

EFORE HEADING TO THE SALT RIVER, Deviche and

I meet at Chandler's Veterans Oasis Park in the southeast corner of metro Phoenix, not far from where the urban finally gives way to farmland and eventually the desert. We're here because of the park's lake, a dependable spot to see multiple odonate species.

Deviche carries a large butterfly net, which draws puzzled looks from the moms pushing their babies around the lake in jogging strollers. He wields the net like a wizard waving a wand, sweeping it through the air to scoop up the dragonflies before flicking his wrist to create a pocket at the end of the net so the insects can't escape.

He doesn't miss often, so I get close-up looks at black saddlebags, red-tailed pennants and roseate skimmers, the latter a dragonfly that Deviche describes as “aggressively territorial.” As Deviche reaches into the net, the dragonflies' rigid wings click like castanets. The wings vary from colorless and transparent to translucent red and amber, but they share a similar structure. Veins divide the membrane into sections, creating an assortment of rectangles, triangles and pentagons. The patterns of the wings remind me of leaded glass, and the dragonflies' faces, with those giant eyes and the prominent mandibles they use to rip apart their prey, are oddly expressive.

We spend a couple of hours just watching odonates be odo-nates — mating, hunting and chasing away rivals — before driving separately to the Salt River, more than 30 miles to the northeast. Deviche wants to show me a different spot because the species mix varies from location to location, depending on such factors as elevation, fish population and water quality. Some odes, Deviche says, can survive in polluted conditions, while others require much purer water.

The diversity along the river is quite high, with 46 documented species. Even before we reach the water, Deviche spots a white-belted ringtail, a dragonfly with a dramatically striped thorax and a black-and-white-banded abdomen, resting on a fence above a cholla. And with its turquoise eyes and beaded accents along its body, a blue-eyed darner poised along a nearby branch resembles a piece of exquisitely crafted Navajo jewelry.Deviche says when he first began observing dragonflies, very few people gave them much thought. In the past 10 years, however, more and more people have developed an interest, and there now are a couple of odonate identification apps. Deviche thinks dragonfly watching is where birding was back in the 1980s. “I don’t know anyone who has gone from dragonflies to birds,” Deviche says. “But I know a lot of people who have gone from birds to dragonflies.” It’s no easy avocation, even though odonates are big, as bugs go. The largest insect of all time was a prehistoric dragonfly with a wingspan of 27 inches (about the same as a Cooper’s hawk), and some dragonflies today still have wingspans of nearly 8 inches. But trying to sort out the aerial circus all around me is a bit like a cat trying to catch the beam of a laser pointer. It’s always out of reach.

DeBardeleben says after he got burned out on birding — which had “become my life, my obsession” — he decided to give odes a chance. In 2017, he dedicated a few months exclusively to dragonflies, and the hiatus inspired a fresh passion and rejuvenated his fascination with birding.

“I like the challenges that odes bring,” he says. “Some are easy to find and identify, but others require searching and luck. It’s a whole other world to be interested in. What odes did was open my eyes to a different side of nature. No matter where I go, there’s another new ode to see.” Deviche and I say goodbye to DeBardeleben and work our way toward the main channel. Through a break in the reeds, we see a couple drinking beer as they float by on inner tubes.

“Hey, whatcha looking for?” asks the bearded man, sipping from his Coors Light as he points to Deviche’s net.

“Dragonflies!” Deviche replies. As if that’s the most natural answer in the world.

Some widow skimmers buzz around the inner tubes, and the man’s head moves in quick little circles as he follows them for a few seconds. Then he turns back to us and chuckles: “Dragonflies? Oh, I guess you ain’t having to look too hard to spot any of those here.” AN