Montana Field Guide

Help

Montana Field Guides

Home - Other Field Guides
- Kingdom - Animals - Animalia
  - Phylum - Spiders, Insects, and Crustaceans - Arthropoda
    - Class - Insects - Insecta
      - Order - Dragonflies / Damselflies - Odonata
        
        Family - Darner Dragonflies - Aeshnidae
        
        Species - Shadow Darner - Aeshna umbrosa occidentalis

Shadow Darner - Aeshna umbrosa occidentalis

No photos are currently available

If you have a high quality photo of this species, are confident in the identification, and would like to submit it for inclusion on the Montana Field Guide, please send it to us using our online photo submission tool.

Image Copyright and Usage Information

Native Species

Global Rank: G5T5
State Rank: S4S5

Agency Status
USFWS:
USFS:
BLM:

External Links

General Description

We do not yet have descriptive information on this species. Please try the buttons above to search for information from other sources.

Food Habits

Larvae feed on a wide variety of aquatic insects, such as mosquito larvae, other aquatic fly larvae, mayfly larvae, and freshwater shrimp. They will also eat very small fish and tadpoles.
Adult- The dragonfly will eat almost any soft-bodied flying insect including mosquitoes, flies, small moths, mayflies, and flying ants or termites.

Stewardship Responsibility

References

Additional ReferencesLegend: View Online Publication
Do you know of a citation we're missing?
- Dunkle, S.W. 2000. Dragonflies through binoculars: A field guide to dragonflies of North America. New York, NY. Oxford University Press. 266 pp.
- Paulson, D.R. 2009. Dragonflies and Damselflies of the West. Princeton University Press, Princeton. 535 pp.
Web Search Engines for Articles on "Shadow Darner"
Additional Sources of Information Related to "Insects"

Take us with you!

Look for this PDF icon as you search and browse. Click it to build a custom PDF with species shown on that page or for all the species within that taxonomic level. To create your own list of species, use the PDF Creator tool at the bottom of the Advanced Search page.

Here's some links if you want to download a whole group.

Dragonflies / Damselflies

Ferns and allies

Conifers

Flowering Plants (Dicots)

Flowering Plants (Monocots)

Citation for data on this website:
Shadow Darner — Aeshna umbrosa occidentalis. Montana Field Guide. Montana Natural Heritage Program. Retrieved on June 30, 2025, from https://FieldGuide.mt.gov/speciesDetail.aspx?elcode=IIODO14192