''Libelloides macaronius'' is a day-flying

owlfly Ascalaphidae is a family of insects in the order Neuroptera, commonly called owlflies; there are some 450 extant species. They are fast-flying crepuscular or diurnal predators of other flying insects, and have large bulging eyes and strongly k ...

species of Europe and Asia. The genus belongs to the family Ascalaphidae, subfamily Ascalaphinae. The species has appeared on postage stamps of

Moldova Moldova ( , ; ), officially the Republic of Moldova ( ro, Republica Moldova), is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north, east, and south. The unrecognised state of Transnist ...

and

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian invas ...

Description

The adult is a large insect somewhat resembling a

dragonfly A dragonfly is a flying insect belonging to the infraorder Anisoptera below the order Odonata. About 3,000 extant species of true dragonfly are known. Most are tropical, with fewer species in temperate regions. Loss of wetland habitat threate ...

. Its body, eyes, and long clubbed antennae are black; the wings are bright yellow, spotted with black, the forewings being partly transparent near the wingtips. The abdomen ends with a pair of hooked claspers in the male, a short

ovipositor The ovipositor is a tube-like organ used by some animals, especially insects, for the laying of eggs. In insects, an ovipositor consists of a maximum of three pairs of appendages. The details and morphology of the ovipositor vary, but typica ...

in the female. At rest, adults often perch like dragonflies with their wings outspread. They fly rapidly and rather straight over grass or bushes. The species has the excellent eyesight of predatory day-flying insects, though the large eyes are of the superposition type normally found in nocturnal insects.

Distribution and ecology

The species occurs in central, eastern, and southern Europe, and

Palearctic The Palearctic or Palaearctic is the largest of the eight biogeographic realms of the Earth. It stretches across all of Eurasia north of the foothills of the Himalayas, and North Africa. The realm consists of several bioregions: the Euro-Si ...

Asia. They live in relatively open areas such as farm meadows and pasture, and wilder dry grassland and scrubland. Adults are fast-flying diurnal

predator Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill ...

s that use their legs to catch their prey in flight. They have robust mandibles, able to pierce the

exoskeleton An exoskeleton (from Greek ''éxō'' "outer" and ''skeletós'' "skeleton") is an external skeleton that supports and protects an animal's body, in contrast to an internal skeleton ( endoskeleton) in for example, a human. In usage, some of the ...

s of heavily-

sclerotised Sclerotin is a component of the cuticle of various Arthropoda, most familiarly insects. It is formed by cross-linking members of particular classes of protein molecules, a biochemical process called sclerotization, a form of tanning in which qu ...

prey. They feed on a wide variety of other insects including aphids, beetles, hemipteran bugs, cockroaches, dipteran flies, and neuropterans. They are predated upon by insect-eating birds and spiders.

Taxonomy

The species was named ''Libelloides macaronius'' by the Austrian naturalist

Giovanni Antonio Scopoli Giovanni Antonio Scopoli (sometimes Latinized as Johannes Antonius Scopolius) (3 June 1723 – 8 May 1788) was an Italian physician and naturalist. His biographer Otto Guglia named him the "first anational European" and the "Linnaeus of the Au ...

in 1763. Among the many synonyms are ''Ascalaphus macaronius'' (Scopoli, 1763), Myrmeleon kolywanensis (Laxmann, 1770), and ''Ascalaphus oculatus'' (Brullé, 1832). File:Owlfly (Libelloides macaronius) female Istria 2 (cropped).jpg, female with wings folded File:Libelloides macaronius eggs.jpg, Eggs laid in rows on plant stalks File:The head of Libelloides macaronius.jpg, Head, showing large two-part

compound eye A compound eye is a visual organ found in arthropods such as insects and crustaceans. It may consist of thousands of ommatidia, which are tiny independent photoreception units that consist of a cornea, lens, and photoreceptor cells which dis ...

File:Stamp of Moldova 092.gif, Adult on a 1997

postage stamp File:Stamp of Ukraine s669.jpg, Adult on a 2005

postage stamp

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q307196 macaronius Neuroptera of Europe Insects described in 1763 Taxa named by Giovanni Antonio Scopoli