Amanda Hanzel Dragonflies

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/charles_anderson_discovers_dragonflies_that_cross_oceans.html

Charles Anderson is a marine biologist and spends a massive amount of his time diving in the ocean and observing the life there. However, while he spent time in the Maldives, he noticed a strange phenomenon, dragonflies whose normal life span is about a year, ten to eleven of which is spent in water as larva, come in a huge wave every year to the Maldives in October. The strange thing about this is that the Maldives is a grouping of islands that are made entirely of coral reefs, sand, and some plants. The water there soaks into the ground and there is no water above ground besides the ocean. Dragonflies need standing fresh water for their larva and therefore, the dragonflies cannot breed there. The monsoon was also in the southwest part and so, how could they come to the Maldives from India, against the winds? He compared dates of when they arrived in India and down the archipelago of the Maldives, and sure enough, they had to be coming from India. How was this possible? It turns out that the monsoons are actually always present and they form a crease in between them. When it is in the southwest monsoon the northeast monsoon, the winds that blow from India down to the Maldives is still present at a higher altitude. The dragonflies were actually coming in on the northeast monsoon at an altitude of 1000 to 2000 meters. Why? Because, they're actually on a journey in search of new breeding grounds. By following the wind, the dragonflies are following the seasonal rains because wind always converges to where the rain is. The result of this is that these dragonflies, in four generations, travel a complete circuit of the Indian Ocean and other creatures follow them. Some examples of these animals are: Amor Falcons, and Eurasian Rollers, both of which are birds that migrate with the same winds and eat insects like dragonflies.