Montana Field Guide

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The habitat of the Dot-tailed Whiteface is a wide variety of lakes and ponds, bogs, sloughs, and marshes, as well as slow streams, all with abundant emergent vegetation. This species is often encountered basking in sunlit clearing some distance away from breeding sites, especially immatures (Dunkle 2000, Nikula et al. 2002, Paulson 2009).

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.

Male Dot-tailed Whitefaces are defensive but maintain only small territories that are not fixed. They will also switch to wandering rather than holding a territory. Mated pairs will fly for lengthy periods of time, looking for an appropriate copulation site, usually low in the vegetation or in nearby trees. Female Dot-tailed Whitefaces oviposit in flight by irregularly tapping water with the tip of their abdomen, often with a hovering male guarding nearby. Male-male tandem pairs have been observed occasionally, but it is thought that a mated male is preventing a competing male from mating with an ovipositing female (Dunkle 2000, Nikula et al. 2002, Paulson 2009).