Assorted Ephemerella

When seining for bugs in the McKenzie, one always comes up with a net full of various ephemerella nymphs.

(body length approx 0.4-0.5 cm)

The nymph above was caught in early spring, and was only of interest because of the cool red racing stripe it had down its back. I wouldn't advocate going out and putting red stripes down the back of all your nymphs, but here are enough of them that they show up every few dips of the net. It was caught in late May.

(body length approx 0.3-0.4 cm)

The admittedly sketchy pics above are of another ephemerella, caught in March. The image on the left is of it standing in a sort of defense position, arching its abdomen so that its tails point up or cover its body. Quite a few crawler nymphs seem to do this. As you can see on the right, crawler nymphs also can swim, by wiggling their tails up and down. This one was caught in the act of swimming by a penny.

dmason@zebu.uoregon.edu