home >   On August 8, 2008, I was lucky enough to spot two Dancer, species Argia, damsefly larva just after they crawled from the water and began their their transformation into damselflies. Damselflies begin their lives as aquatic larvae. Depending on the species, they spend from a few months to a few years living underwater, breathing through gills. While small, damselflies are competant predators with good eyesight and fast, strong jaws. The transformation process, called emergence, of these two damselflies took about 1 hour. Note the almost complete absence of wings and short stubby abdomen in the early photos compared with the large, graceful translucent wings and long, thin abdomen in later ones. The light colored insect is the living damselfly. The dark colored "insect" is the exuvia -- the cast-off larval exoskeleton. caption: file: x - square 0" x 0" at 300 dpi - release: contact us regarding image add image to lightbox References Manolis, Tim. Dragonflies and Damselflies of California. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.