Dispersal characteristics of seven odonate species in an agricultural landscape

Dispersal is an ecological phenomenon which is of fundamental importance to population biology. While dispersal behaviour of many orders of winged ins ects has received a great deal of attention, the dispersal characteristics of odonates have been poorly documented. We used capture-mark-recapture tec hniques to study dispersal behaviour of seven species of odonates breeding on a network of 11 small ponds in Cheshire, U.K. The ponds ranged in size f rom 615 to 1300 m(2) and varied from 30 to 860 m apart. We found surprising ly high rates of dispersal between ponds, with 10-47% per species of recapt ured individuals moving from their natal pond. The mean probability of disp ersal differed significantly among species but the relationship between the probability of dispersal and distance moved consistently followed a simple negative exponential curve for all species. Most individuals stayed at the ir natal pond, but a few moved long distances. Neither the age at which an individual was marked (teneral vs sexually mature) nor its sex significantl y affected its tendency to disperse. The negative exponential relationship suggests that dispersal should be relatively easy to incorporate in more co mplex models of odonate spatio-temporal dynamics. To our knowledge, this is the first large-scale, multi-species study to assess dispersal behaviour o f odonates by direct observation.