Rayetta's Dragonflies

A good dichotomous key is a joy. A bad dichotomous key is torture. A good dichotomous allows a person of average intelligence to breeze through the identification process. A bad dichotomous key leaves the user wondering if she is an idiot.

Chances are, the user may not be the idiot. What if characters used by the preparer of the key spring only from the imagination of the key prepaper and are nowise described or illustrated, elsewhere, anywhere? Yet the key is described by its author as user friendly. With the semi-burgeoning interest in field guides for taxa more properly studied under the microscope, chances are, again, more and more of those type keys are extant. I am dealing with one of those keys at this very nonce.

All righty then. My methodology for identifying the CB dragonflies to species, (the list of species keeps growing, amazingly) includes getting a picture of the wing venation of each dragonfly. I need at least one forewing and one hindwing in good focus. Then I may have to crop it to as much as 75% or so. Here's one of my wing venation pictures. But also, there are a couple of interesting processes located on the first abodominal segment, maybe.