#stoneflies

A very large stonefly (about 2.5”) I found in my school last Friday! I showed her to my bio teacher and he couldn’t ID the exact species, but confirmed she’s female. Brought her outside afterwards so nobody could squish her

Juvenile hemimetabolous insects are called nymphs, and they look almost exactly like their adult counterparts. However, aquatic nymphs, called naiads, have a couple more differences due to living in a different environment.

For example, this blue-tailed damselfly nymph (Ischnura Elegans) has gills on the end of its abdomen.

Some insects that have naiads (aquatic nymphs) are dragonflies & damselflies (Odonata), mayflies (Ephemeroptera), and stoneflies (Plecoptera).

Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia: vol. 2 - Insects. Written by Dr. Bernhard Grzimek. 1984.

Internet Archive

New Zealand's native stoneflies have changed color in response to human-driven environmental changes, new research shows. Just published in the journal Science, the University of Otago study provides arguably the world's most clear-cut case of animal evolution in response to change made by humans. Co-author Professor Jon Waters, of the Department of Zoology, says the stonefly has become a different color due to recent deforestation.

Made my first riso print earlier this month at Rabbits Road Press in London!

Will have a limited number of them up in my online shop in the new year as well as my new book.

If you've ever nudged over a big rock and seen a cricket-looking alien with seemingly too many legs, you've encountered a stonefly! For scientist Anna Eichert, standing waist-deep in a river looking for these critters is the best part of her job, and something she feels should be important to everyone. "We kind of joke around here in my lab that ‘insects don't have rights’" she explains, "because like when you study other groups of animals and biology, it's much harder to be able to obtain samples and specimens and et cetera. And so I think it's just super important to just have them on your mind and educate other people of their ecological importance and educate your children so that they can love and not fear insects. You know, even that makes a difference."

Stoneflies, or Plecoptera, are an order of insects with around 4,000 species. But that’s about to change. In her paper “Stonefly systematics: past, present, and future,” Anna and her colleagues from around the world map out the way stoneflies have changed as a group over time, some of the factors that shape our current understanding of stoneflies, and what can change in the future to make sure our knowledge of stonefly diversity continues to grow. Learn from Anna’s account of her experiences and her passion for stoneflies in this episode, and next time you encounter a stream, flip over a rock or two.

Anna Eichert’s paper “Stonefly systematics: past, present, and future” is in volume 9, issue 4 of Insect Systematics and Diversity.  It can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1093/isd/ixaf026

Listen to the episode here, or wherever you get your podcasts

Giant Salmonfly (Pteronarcys californica)

Class: Insecta

Distribution: Western North America, from the coast to the Sierra-Nevada mountains, northward to Alaska and Yukon and southward to Mexico.

Habitat: Nymphs live on the bottom of fast-moving, well-oxygenated rocky rivers. Adults can be found along shoreline vegetation and rocks.

Diet: Detritivores; nymphs feed on organic matter found at the bottom of rivers that have collected in debris dams or behind boulders, such as decaying leaves. Adults eat very little, if at all.

Description: Salmonflies are the largest stonefly species on the west coast, reaching up to three inches in length at their adult stage. To get to this size, nymphs grow through anywhere from twelve to twenty instars over a span of three or four years. They accumulate in large groups at the shoreline just before emergence, before finally crawling onto shore for the final molt. This event is the highlight of the spring fishing season, as mature nymphs and adult salmonflies are often used as fishing bait.

Salmonflies belong to the order Plecoptera, or stoneflies, which are often used as indicators of water quality due to their intolerance of water pollution; their presence is an indicator of excellent water quality! For this reason, the presence of stonefly nymphs is often closely monitered, along with the abundance of other pollution-intolerant orders such as Ephemeroptera and Trichoptera (mayflies and caddisflies, respectively).