Pied Paddy Skimmer (Neurothemis tullia)

Just before the daylight faded, in the late afternoon, I was walking around near my house. While walking along the side of the road, suddenly an extraordinarily beautiful dragonfly sitting on the tip of the grass caught my eye. Its wings, in a mix of black and white, looked so wonderful in the twilight that I immediately took my mobile out of my pocket and took a picture. The dragonfly you see in my taken picture is called the 'pied paddy skimmer' in English. Their male and female dragonflies look completely different. Half of the wings of the male dragonfly are blackish and the rest is transparent. On the other hand, the body of the female dragonfly is greenish-yellow in color.

​Scientific Name
​This beautiful dragonfly has a specific scientific name. In the scientific world, it is known as Neurothemis tullia. In 1773, Drury first gave its scientific name.
​Family Genus
​According to the scientific classification of biology, they are insects of the Arthropoda phylum of the animal kingdom. They are mainly members of the Libellulidae family under the Odonata order. In the scientific world, their genus name is Neurothemis.

​Origin and Habitat
​In terms of geographical distribution, they are mainly residents of South and South-East Asia. They are seen in abundance in various Asian countries including Bangladesh, India, China, Malaysia, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. They generally prefer to live around wetlands, ponds full of aquatic plants, lakes, and paddy fields. They usually fly low near the ground.

​Food
​Like other dragonflies, they are also completely carnivorous or predatory insects. They are very skilled hunters. They usually catch and eat mosquitoes, small flies, midges, and other small flying insects while in the air during flight to satisfy their meal.

​Breeding
​Their entire breeding process is water-centric. The female dragonfly usually lays eggs on aquatic plants in ponds or wetlands. After the eggs hatch and the babies or nymphs come out, they grow up in the water. While in the water, they survive by eating small aquatic insects and after molting several times, they become full-fledged dragonflies and come up to the land spreading their wings.

​Benefits
​They play a great role in maintaining the balance of the environment and naturally controlling harmful insects. They do a huge favor to our environment by eating a large number of mosquitoes and harmful small flying insects around us every day.

​Harms
​They have no direct harmful aspects for humans or plants. They are a completely harmless insect and instead of doing any harm to nature, they actually benefit us by eating harmful insects.

I learned about them from various sites including iNaturalist, Wikipedia and Google.

_{​***(All posts are written in Bengali and translated into English using Google Translate.)***}