Mayfly - Callibaetis ferrugineus hageni

I'm fascinated with Mayflies and with the help of some of the experts over at Bugguide I now have a better understanding of them. They pointed me to some excellent resources. Right now I am reading a masters thesis by Jeffrey Michael Webb which can be found on the University of Saskatchewan website.

I would have never guessed that there are 675 known North American species of Mayfly; 321 of these occur in Canada, Saskatchewan having 107 species. The possibility of finding and photographing them seem limitless. It would probably take me 107 years to try and get them all. According to the thesis, Mayflies arose during the Carboniferous and are the oldest order of extant winged insects.

Most of all, I am fascinated by their eyes. I've learned that Callibaetis is one of the more sexually dimorphic species. The photos in this post are of the same species as my last post, but these are males, which have turbinate eyes (raised on a stalk), so they look different.

One of my older posts of a different species of Mayfly show just how different the eyes can be.

Mayfly - Callibaetis ferrugineus hageni

I've been going through my photos from last summer. Here's a Mayfly that I'd found resting on a window screen at work.