''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 kn ...

species of Europe and Asia. The genus belongs to the family

Ascalaphidae 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 Diurnality, diurnal predators of other flying insects, and have large bulging eyes and ...

, subfamily

Ascalaphinae Ascalaphinae is the type subfamily of the neuropteran owlfly family. Most species are found in the tropics. Their characteristic apomorphy , shared with the Ululodinae, is the ridge which divides each of their large compound eyes; both groups are ...

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 dragonflies are known. Most are tropical, with fewer species in temperate regions. Loss of wetland habitat threat ...

. 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 a biogeographic realm of the Earth, the largest of eight. Confined almost entirely to the Eastern Hemisphere, it stretches across Europe and Asia, north of the foothills of the Himalayas, and North Africa. Th ...

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 in which one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common List of feeding behaviours, feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation ...

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

exoskeleton An exoskeleton () . is a skeleton that is on the exterior of an animal in the form of hardened integument, which both supports the body's shape and protects the internal organs, in contrast to an internal endoskeleton (e.g. human skeleton, that ...

s of heavily- sclerotised 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 Latinisation of names, Latinized as Johannes Antonius Scopolius) (3 June 1723 – 8 May 1788) was an Italians, Italian physician and natural history, naturalist. His biographer Otto Guglia named him the "first ...

in 1763. Among the many synonyms are ''Ascalaphus macaronius'' (Scopoli, 1763), Myrmeleon kolywanensis (Laxmann, 1770), and ''Ascalaphus oculatus'' (Brullé, 1832). The species was depicted on postage stamps of

Moldova Moldova, officially the Republic of Moldova, is a Landlocked country, landlocked country in Eastern Europe, with an area of and population of 2.42 million. Moldova is bordered by Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north, east, and south. ...

and

Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...

. 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 Eye, visual organ found in arthropods such as insects and crustaceans. It may consist of thousands of ommatidium, ommatidia, which are tiny independent photoreception units that consist of a cornea, lens (anatomy), lens, and p ...

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