EPONA's Segmented Dragonfly
The Epona group of Tacoma, WA would like to introduce their existence by suggesting solutions to the Segmented Dragonfly questions. The ugly little beasties caught our imagination and we took to task the justification of their existence. Members prominent in the development process were Susan Sackinger, Philip W. and Jennifer Payne.
Think of the five segments of the Segmented Dragonfly as representing all the stages of it's own development except for the egg stage. When the eggs first hatch, they're little more than a wiggling tail, and fairly brainless. Their only purpose in life is to attach to a more adult segment. If they cannot, they will starve to death, because they do not have a stomach developed enough to handle non-processed food. If the Dragonfly they attach to already has five segments, the lead segment - or head - will detach and hopefully become attached to another tail baby. Because neither the head nor the tail can fly, they end up in the water. This could be likened - just barely - to the larval stage of butterflies or to the tadpole stage of frogs. The food for both the larva and the adult dragonfly is pond scum. The adult reaches it by dipping into the water or "resting" on the top.
Flight capability was developed to escape enemies. This means there will probably be a fairly high attrition in the larva. To offset this, the reproductive cycle of the adult - and the time in larva stage - is fairly short. Since the neural net is constantly in flux, this means that the overall intelligence of the segmented dragonfly can't improve greatly.
The second to the last segment is the "male" stage and the next in line is the female. This was an arbitrary decision, but if anyone can come up with evidence that favors one sex over the other let us know. Each colony produces it's own fertilized eggs and deposits them in the water for maturation. Since the fourth and third segments have only two jobs - mature and reproduce - quite a few egg sacks could be laid.
The second segment from the front really has only one over-riding job: prepare to become the head. Since the head does a lot of work, this is not an easy task. Segment two does most of the major work in processing the food, but three and four can take that process on if necessary. Remember, each stage is just a younger version of the one previous.
The first and final stage of the segmented dragonfly is the head. It is the main information processor. Here is where the core of the neural net is stored. Any decision making is done mostly from here although segment two can make some of the minor decisions. Here, too, is the mouth. Actually, all the segments have mouths, but they are attached to the anus of the segment in front of them. The head masticates the food and processes it through it's intestinal tract. It's processing is very inefficient, so that the waste is still very high in nutritional value. This has two effects. First, it allows nutrition to reach even the tail segment. Second, in larval form, it jumps up the nutrition going to the tail by a factor of 4 and thus jump starts the maturation process. The tail takes much less time to become capable of flying and thus escape their enemies.
If, for some reason the head should become detached early from the mature colony, the remaining segments should be able to take over. They may have diminished capacity, but they should be viable. This gives the dragonfly an added advantage of being a bit harder to kill. Damage to the first in line will not kill the colony; nor will damage to any but the first. The only way to kill off the colony is to damage both the first and second segments, and - depending on where they are in their cycle - possibly the third! Surely such indestructibility is an evolutionary advantage.