Arizona Wildlife Notebook Introduction
Base Layer for Notebook Cover
The second edition of my “Arizona Wildlife Notebook” will be off to the printer (CreateSpace) as soon as I finish the cover. This edition has introductions and checklists for 12 groups of Arizona animal species: Amphibians, ants, bats, birds, butterflies and moths, dragonflies and damselflies, fish, grasshoppers, lizards, mammals, snakes, and turtles. Groups in bold type are new to the Notebook. The introduction to each group covers the group’s conservation issues and provides references for printed and online field guides. The checklist for each group includes scientific and common names and conservation status. I alphabetized each checklist by scientific name, and I included an index for all the common names. Continue reading
Damselflies and Dragonflies belong to the order Odonata (“toothed ones”). They are carnivorous predators whose earliest fossils occur in Pennsylvanian sediments deposited about 325 million years ago. Evolution chanced upon an efficient form for these creatures; only small changes have occurred for the last 200 million years. Compare that to mammal predators, most of which have persisted less than 50 million years.
GarryRogers Nature Conservation 