mustached clubtail

The face is yellow. The upper part of the face (frons) is completely surrounded with a bold black border. The bottom of the border forms a black “mustache” line across the face that gives this species its common name. There is also a wider horizontal stripe on the lower part of the face above the upper lip (labrum), and an inverted triangle dividing the labrum.

Total length: 1 11 ⁄16″ to 1 13 ⁄16″

Fast-flowing streams and rivers, exposed lake shores

Early May to late August

Sources

7, 18, 29, 30, 82, 83.

Haarstad, J. 1997. The dragonflies of selected eastern Minnesota rivers. Report submitted to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. Unpaged.

Superfamily
Some taxonomic sources, including iNaturalist.org and the NCBI database, place the family Gomphidae in the superfamily Gomphoidea under the suborder Anisoptera. This reflects a modern classification based on recent phylogenetic studies. Other sources, such as BugGuide.net and Catalogue of Life, follow a more traditional classification that places Gomphidae directly under Anisoptera with no superfamily. This difference is not a simplified ranking, but rather a reflection of the ongoing process of updating taxonomy as new evidence becomes available.

Genus
This species was formerly classified as Gomphus adelphus. In an attempt to clarify the relationships of species in the genus Gomphus (Needham, 1947) , five subgenera were proposed. This species was placed in the subgenus Hylogomphus. In later years, several other subgenera were defined. Nine of the genera were grouped in what was called the Gomphus complex. A recent phylogenetic analysis (Ware, et al., 2017) raised all nine subgenera in the complex to genus level, and Gomphus adelphus became Hylogomphus adelphus.