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Farewell to the last lord of the dance.
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sndipo wrote:
What a great shot! Do you know the ID of the insect?
Its a Mayfly Vee, only lives for a day!
Wish I knew more about insects, also wish they wouldn’t creep me out so much that I would have more interest! :D Is it considered as a fly or what then? I’ve heard of butterflies that live only a day..
Thank you all for your kind comments :-)
For Vee n Jenny…and anyone else interested…here is a brief life script of a Mayfly- Lat. name Ephermeroptera danica....The mayfly spends the first two years of life on the river bed..as a nymph…grubbing in the dirt…feeding…growing….and then at the appointed time…that nymph changes it’s biochemistry…air pockets form inside it…and the nymph’s body floats upward to the water/air interface…and from that old nymph body a new and beautiful body breaks free as a sub imago mayfly..which is olive green in color. This ‘sub- imago’ flies to shore and rests ( on white hawthorn bushes and grass)..another biochemical transformation takes place…another shedding of body…to the final transformation…where the mayfly finally becomes a full ‘imago’…blacker in color (as above). The final transformation complete..both male and female mayfly imagos start to ‘dance’ on the air columns..they mate…the males fall spent to the water..the females dance over the water and lay new eggs on the river bed by using their long tails to pierce the surface tension of the water of their birth..they lay new eggs which will form the next generation of mayfly nymphs. This happens every May on my beloved river Boyne (Co. Meath). The appearance of the white hawthorn flower is a usual indication that the time is coming for the Mayfly to arise…brown trout feed on the mayfly …a fly fisherman tries to outwit the trout with an artificial mayfly..and the photographer gets a chance to shoot the miracle. Mayfly dance..mayfly die…the cycle repeats.
Everything is connected…nothing is wasted…..energy is neither created nor destroyed..it simply moves from one form to another…
sndipo wrote:
Wish I knew more about insects, also wish they wouldn’t creep me out so much that I would have more interest! :D Is it considered as a fly or what then? I’ve heard of butterflies that live only a day..
Dont know a lot about them myself Vee, but they start life as a nymph living underwater similar to Dragonflies and
Demoiselles, so may belong to the same family. You should get yourself a little book I find the more you know
about them the less scary they become, and some of them are quite beautiful.:roll: Beat me to it Dayglo :)
Ooops sorry Jenny..:-)…excuse my timing :-)
The Mayfly belong to the Ephemeroptera order
See:http://bugguide.net/node/view/78″ onclick=”window.open(this.href);return false;
Yeah, a full book of creepy tangley pointy stuff, no thanks :D All this sounds rather pretty and an amazing cycle so thanks for that. I am also a bit smarter now on top of seeing a great picture of the fly itself :) Next goal- try see one in real life ;)
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