Mayfly portrait
Moderators: rjlittlefield, ChrisR, Chris S., Pau
Mayfly portrait
I found a Mayfly at last, been looking for one for ages, but not much water round here... This one landed on our car the other day. It's a tiny thing, body length around 5mm. The head is less than 1mm across it's longest axis..
Stack of around 120 images with Nikon 10x CF objective on OM bellows at around 1/2 extension. Aligned and stacked in CombineZP.
Not entirely happy with the background colour, I think I'm getting a bit bored of my normal sandpaper background so I was experimenting!
Stack of around 120 images with Nikon 10x CF objective on OM bellows at around 1/2 extension. Aligned and stacked in CombineZP.
Not entirely happy with the background colour, I think I'm getting a bit bored of my normal sandpaper background so I was experimenting!
- rjlittlefield
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This is very nicely done, Laurie. I like the dull blue background color.
What you have here is one of the male mayflies with "turbanate" eyes, like this one that I imaged a couple of years ago.
Yours looks much better, by the way!
Not all mayflies have this type of eyes. Of the mayflies that I find frequently, most kinds have the ordinary spherical eyes, males as well as females. The ones with turbanate eyes are tiny, in body size as well as fraction of the population.
I see from your comments that this specimen is tiny too. Is it the only kind that you've run into with these eyes?
--Rik
What you have here is one of the male mayflies with "turbanate" eyes, like this one that I imaged a couple of years ago.
Yours looks much better, by the way!
Not all mayflies have this type of eyes. Of the mayflies that I find frequently, most kinds have the ordinary spherical eyes, males as well as females. The ones with turbanate eyes are tiny, in body size as well as fraction of the population.
I see from your comments that this specimen is tiny too. Is it the only kind that you've run into with these eyes?
--Rik
Good grief what strange eyes you have! I've never seen a mayfly up close like that,why would they have such eyes? BTW Laurie I like the background colour as it contrasts nicely with the eye colour!
Canon 5D and 30D | Canon IXUS 265HS | Cosina 100mm f3.5 macro | EF 75-300 f4.5-5.6 USM III | EF 50 f1.8 II | Slik 88 tripod | Apex Practicioner monocular microscope
- rjlittlefield
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These eyes split the visual field into two portions. The lower eye gives a low resolution view of environment to the side, while the upper eye gives a high resolution view looking more or less straight up. It's really an excellent design for spotting potential mates flying above, while staying in more or less the right place to let that happen.Cyclops wrote:why would they have such eyes?
--Rik
These sort of thinghs always amaze me. I imagine the fly must be able to switch between the two sets of eyes,otherwise things would get awfully confusing surely! Such a primitive creature with a tiny brain yet it can do so much. Nature truly is marvellous!
Edit,I just realised it was mentioned that only the males have these eyes,so their purpose would have sexual connotations?
Edit,I just realised it was mentioned that only the males have these eyes,so their purpose would have sexual connotations?
Canon 5D and 30D | Canon IXUS 265HS | Cosina 100mm f3.5 macro | EF 75-300 f4.5-5.6 USM III | EF 50 f1.8 II | Slik 88 tripod | Apex Practicioner monocular microscope
- rjlittlefield
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Bingo! The mating flights are asymmetric. The males need 'em, the females don't.Cyclops wrote:Edit,I just realised it was mentioned that only the males have these eyes,so their purpose would have sexual connotations?
True enough, but the "switching" may be a lot easier than you might imagine.I imagine the fly must be able to switch between the two sets of eyes,otherwise things would get awfully confusing surely!
These split eyes are evolved from ordinary spherical eyes, and really the only change is that the upper receptors are bigger and arranged in a flatter pattern. That gives more resolution in that area, at the cost of some area that's not covered at all.
What the bug sees is probably not much different from what a human would see if they closed one eye and placed the other eye an inch or so away from the eyepiece of a telescope. Again, a low resolution wide angle view (around the eyepiece), plus a high resolution narrow view (through the eyepiece), with an excluded area between them (the rim of the eyepiece).
--Rik
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Thanks all!
Rik, I knew I'd seen a stack of one of these somewhere, it was your stack that's kept me on the look out for one of these guys.. I must have come across it in those months I was trawling through the archives here before I got the confidence to start posting!
I've only seen one other Mayfly this year, and I'm not even 100% sure it was a mayfly, spotted it, thought 'aha, that's a mayfly' then promptly lost it in a bush!
Harold. lol! I've been looking since the start of the bug season this year!
I've got a great selection of bugs round here but virtually no water, so not many dragons, damsels, mayflies, no stoneflies at all.. I do see an odd dragon or damsel but obviously they're good fliers so can make it some way from water. And an odd caddisfly - guess they must be reasonably strong fliers as well..
Rik, I knew I'd seen a stack of one of these somewhere, it was your stack that's kept me on the look out for one of these guys.. I must have come across it in those months I was trawling through the archives here before I got the confidence to start posting!
I've only seen one other Mayfly this year, and I'm not even 100% sure it was a mayfly, spotted it, thought 'aha, that's a mayfly' then promptly lost it in a bush!
Harold. lol! I've been looking since the start of the bug season this year!
I've got a great selection of bugs round here but virtually no water, so not many dragons, damsels, mayflies, no stoneflies at all.. I do see an odd dragon or damsel but obviously they're good fliers so can make it some way from water. And an odd caddisfly - guess they must be reasonably strong fliers as well..
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I had a difficult time trying to find literature re ocelli in Mayflies. Normally ocelli are rather small but these below the eye are huge. Snodgrass 1935 "Principles of Insect Morphology" references a 1901 German paper:Harold Gough wrote:It looks like the standard three occeli (simple eyes) have been displaced forward and they seem to have benefitted from the big-eye gene. Harold
The ocelli of Mayflies present an exceptional structure in that each contains a large lenslike cellular body ... . . .
So my guess is that these largish spherical organs are in fact ocelli.