Mayfly Species Leptophlebia johnsoni (Black Quills)

This is a handsome, shining brown species with whitish mid-abdomen, conspicuously ringed tails and brown-tipped wings; head, thorax, and basal segment of abdomen shining blackish-brown above, paler on the sides; fore legs brownish, middle and hind legs paler especially toward the tarsi. Wings hyaline except for a faint brown apical cloud that is heaviest on the stigmatic region. Costal cross veins obsolete, except in the stigmatic region where they are numerous, oblique, sometimes forked. The subcostal cross veins in this region are few and strong and erect.

Abdomen white on segments 2 to 7 with black dots on the spiracles and yellow ganglia showing through the skin beneath; on the lateral margins there is sometimes a faint wash of brown and there is sometimes a still more faint cloud of brown on the mid-dorsum, especially on segment 7; segments 8-10 are brown above with chalky white streaks in old males at the sides, that extend rearward on the base of the forceps. Forceps white, four-jointed, the three small terminal joints successively more minute, and more or less deciduous. Penes long, yellow, their tips surpassing the principal bend of the forceps, separated by a Y-shaped notch; the reflexed spurs are long, at first convergent then bent rearward and parallel to their tips; the apical notch between the triangular divisions of the 9th sternite is unusually narrow (see fig. 131). The tails are distinctly ringed with rich red brown on the joinings of all the segments.

Described as L. gracilis

Body length 6-7 mm, wing length 5.5-6.5 mm

This is a dainty, pale brown, yellow-legged species, with the middle abdominal segments whitish, cross-barred with pale brown. Head in life orange, including the upper eye. Lower eye and basal rings of ocelli blackish.

Thorax reddish brown or fawn colored with paler marginal lines on the prothorax, in the notal groove, before the wing roots, and in the pleural sutures. Legs pale yellowish, darker on front femora; all with pale tarsi. Fore legs a little longer than the body. Wings sub-hyaline, tinged with brown toward the front by reason of the heavier veins in that portion of the wing, wholly hyaline toward the hind angle. Costal cross veins wanting before the bulla; those in the stigmatic area not very numerous, strongly aslant, and occasionally anastomosing.

Abdomen slender, pale reddish brown toward the ends, whitish in the middle portion, with dorsal cross bands of fawn color overspreading the apical half of segments 3 to 6. On the ventral side the yellow ganglia show through the translucent skin. The spiracles and the extreme apical dorsal margins of segments 8 to 10 are hair-lined in black. Tails subequal, whitish, with joinings of segments narrowly ringed with reddish. Forceps of the male four-jointed, white; penes red, rather narrowly linear and straight with a deep parallel-sided cleft between, each with a minute and very inconspicuous terminal tooth, and with a long slender reflexed spur that reaches proximally nearly to the end of the cleft (see fig. 131). Legs yellow beyond the pale reddish brown femora.

The female is paler than the male on head, thorax and legs, darker on the abdomen, where the middle segments are only a little paler than the end ones, and that mainly on the ventral side. The 9th abdominal sternite is produced beyond the tip of the 10th in a transparent triangular lobe that is divided by a median apical excision in equilateral-triangular form.

Described as L. gracilis

Body length 6-7 mm, wing length 5.5-6.5 mm

In the female the entire dorsal surface is light reddish brown with the abdominal tergites slightly darker.

The subimago in both sexes has wings, feet, and tails of a dull, smoky-brownish color.