The Mayfly Newsletter

The Mayfly Newsletter is the official newsletter of the Permanent Committee of the International Conferences on Ephemeroptera

The Mayfly Newsletter

Crabwalkers and sand minnows: Searching for psammophilic mayflies in the central and western states (& provinces)1 Greg Courtney Department of Entomology, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, USA Motivated by a number of collaborative photography projects with Steve Marshall (e.g., Courtney & Marshall, 2019), I have devoted a bit of time recently to searching for non-dipteran aquatic insects. Among the ongoing projects is a book on which I am not only lead author but in charge of several chapters focused on taxa outside my usual bailiwick (e.g., Ephemeroptera!). Thankfully, Steve has already established an excellent template for such a book (Marshall 2006: “Insects. Their Natural History & Diversity”, which was recently (2017) published as a 2nd edition). His “Flies” (Marshall 2012) and “Beetles” (Marshall 2018) books are other outstanding contributions focused on specific taxa. So, using Steve’s “Insects” book as a template, we have started working on a book on aquatic insects. We have a number of goals, with perhaps the most daunting being inclusion of images of live exemplars of ALL families of aquatic insects GLOBALLY. Because of this goal, I decided that a good starting point for the Ephemeroptera chapter was to see which North American families I still hadn’t photographed. In developing this list, it was obvious that most “missing” families (e.g., Acanthametropodidae, Ametrepodidae, Behningiidae, Pseudironidae) occur in shifting sand, a habitat I had rarely sampled. In fact, the only of these psammophilic (literally “sand-loving”) families I’d ever even seen was Behningiidae, but I had seen these bizarre mayflies only in Thailand, and had never photographed a live nymph

The Mayfly Newsletter

The Mayfly Newsletter is the official newsletter of the Permanent Committee of the International Conferences on Ephemeroptera

Predaceous Water Beetles (Coleoptera: Adephaga: Dytiscidae, Gyrinidae) Collected Along the Horton and Thelon Rivers in the Arctic Central Barrens of Canada

Predaceous water beetles were collected during expeditions along two northern Canadian rivers during 2000 and 2002. Twelve species of Dytiscidae (including 11 named species and one additional genus identified from a larva) and one species of Gyrinidae are recorded from 20 sites along the Horton and Thelon rivers in the Central Barrens area of the Canadian Arctic. These records represent an extension of the distributions of four species to the northeast in the Northwest Territories (NWT), and two species to the northwest in Nunavut (NU). Oreodytes sanmarkii is reported for NWT and for the mainland of NU for the first time. Ilybius erichsoni, Hydroporus geniculatus, and Gyrinus opacus are reported for NU for the first time. Five species were recorded for the first time from the Southern Arctic ecozone, and one from the Taiga Shield ecozone. The majority of specimens were collected in habitats that were consistent with those previously known for each species

First records of Baetis vernus Curtis (Ephemeroptera: Baetidae) in North America, with morphological notes

The Baetis vernus group (Ephemeroptera: Baetidae) – which includes B. brunneicolor McDunnough, B. bundyae Lehmkuhl, B. hudsonicus Ide, B. jaervii Savolainen, B. liebenauae Keffermüller, B. macani Kimmins, B. subalpinus Bengtsson, B. tracheatus Keffermüller & Machel, and B. vernus Curtis – is both diverse and taxonomically tangled. Some members of the group – B. brunneicolor, B. bundyae, and B. hudsonicus – have been previously found in North America. The remainder of the group is known to be only of Palearctic distribution, including B. vernus, which has a wide trans-Palearctic distribution. We report the collection of specimens from the Northwest Territories and British Columbia that we have identified as B. vernus using DNA barcoding and morphological examination and provide characters to assist separation of the North American members of the group from B. vernus. A genetically cohesive Holarctic clade for B. vernus likely relates to a Beringian dispersal event. This substantial expansion of the known range of B. vernus adds new phylogeographic and ecological complexity, but it may also help to provide further clues to the evolutionary history of this group

401 422 John Wiley and Sons New York, NY, USA

The relationship between S. purpurea and its inquilines in northeastern North America is reviewed. Wyeomyia smithii, Metriocnemus knabi and Blaesoxipha fletcheri dominate the insect community of S. purpurea. All 3 are detritivores and feed on the arthropod prey attracted to the pitcher plant. They coexist by partitioning the habitat and food resource spatially. W. smithii lives in the water column of the pitcher and feeds by filtering microorganisms (bacteria and protozoa) from the water. M. knabi feeds on the dead organisms that have accumulated at the bottom of the pitcher. B. fletcheri feeds at the surface on floating prey items that have drowned in the pitcher fluid. The action of these inquilines apparently speeds up the release of nutrients (mainly nitrogen and carbon dioxide) to the plant, and in turn the plant removes potentially toxic metabolic wastes (ammonia, CO2) from the water and infuses oxygen. Pitcher plant habitats, mainly Sphagnum bogs, are at risk in some areas of the region, particularly in the more populated zones in the south, to urbanization, agriculture, aforestation, and peat harvest. However, this represents only a small part of the total available peatland habitat in Canada.