Most of our Interior dragonflies are 'Darners' of the family Aeshnidae. I have seen a few 'Gomphus' dragonflies of the family Gomphinae and some Common Red Skimmers but not enough to include as a major component of the following discussion. Gomphus are also known as 'Clubtails' and the adults generally have a distinctive club-like shape at the end of the tail. The Red Skimmers are smaller than many of our regular dragonflies and adults have a definite reddish color. The fertilized female 'oviposites' her eggs into woody vegetation or in some cases over open water or burrowed into the lake bottom.
Metamorphosis is incomplete and when the eggs hatch they are just a smaller version of later stages.
Therefore, all non-adult versions are simply referred to as nymphs. These nymphs live and grow in the lake and molt their shells 10 to 12 times before they are ready to hatch into adults. The nymphs crawl onto the shore or shore line vegetation to hatch into adults. The adults live for a few weeks to several months before mating. Most of our local dragonflies take one to two years to complete a generation but this can be as long as four years.