Ephemeroptera: Heptageniidae of Gunnison County, ColoradoHeptagenia elegantula
Dark Quill Gordon, Western yellow drake, Grey drake (Eaton) 1885
Updated 29 Feb 2016
TSN 100604
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Heptagenia solitaria
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Photos, Map, Museum specimens, DNA - Barcodinglife.org
References
Bedarik,AF and Edmunds,GF 1980 Descriptions of larval Heptagenia from the Rocky Mountain region (Ephemeroptera: Heptageniidae). Pan-Pacific Entomologist (56) 51-62. PDF
Daggy,RH 1945 New species and previously undescribed naiads of some Minnesota mayflies (Ephemeroptera). Annals of the Entomological Society of America, 38(3), pp.373-396. PDF
Eaton AE. 1883-1888. A revisional monograph of recent Ephemeridae or mayflies. Transactions of the Linnean Society of London, Second Series, Zoology 3:1-352, 65 pl.
Described as Rhithrogena elegantula.
Edmunds Jr, GF. 1995 Habitat differences between northern and southern populations of mayflies of the western United States. Pages 171-176 in Corkum LD; Ciborowski JJH. Current Directions in Research on Ephemeroptera. Canadian Scholars' Press, Inc. Toronto.
Gilpin,BR and Brusven,MA 1970 Food habits and ecology of mayflies of the St. Maries River in Idaho. Melanderia 4:19-40. PDF
Haden,GA; Blinn,DW; Shannon,JP and Wilson,JP 1999 Driftwood: an alternative habitat for macroinvertebrates in a large desert river. Hydrobiologia 397, 179-186. PDF
McCafferty,WP; Durfee,RS; Kondratieff,BC 1993 Colorado mayflies (Ephemeroptera): an annotated inventory. Southwestern Naturalist 38 3, 252-274. PDF
Quote from page "Larvae of H. elegantula can be difficult to distinguish from H. solitaria. See Bednarik and Edmunds (1980) for dorsal abdominal pattern variations in both species. Larvae tentatively identified as H. elegantula in CSU are from Grizzly Creek (Jackson Co.)"
They report specimens in the Purdue University Entomological Collection (PERC) from Iola in Gunnison County. Unfortunately now the ex-Gunnison River at the ex-town of Iola is usually under the water of Blue Mesa Reservoir.
Webb,JM; Sun,L; McCafferty,WP and Ferris,VR 2007 A new species and new synonym in Heptagenia Walsh (Ephemeroptera: Heptageniidae: Heptageniinae) based on molecular and morphological evidence. Journal of Insect Science, 7(1), p.63. Html
Last few sentences of the Abstract: " ... Heptagenia diabasia Burks and H. elegantula (Eaton) differed from each other by only 1.1%; these two alleged species show a clinal pattern in larval abdominal coloration and there are no structural differences between the semaphorants. On this basis, H. diabasia is placed as a junior subjective synonym of H. elegantula, n.syn."
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