Mayfly Species Leptophlebia nebulosa (Black Quills)

This is a brownish black species with ringed abdomen and a pale brown cloud covering the tip of the fore wing. Face brown including antennae.

Thorax shining brown above and below, with somewhat paler sides, that area traversed by pale sutures. Fore legs reddish brown. Middle and hind legs yellowish. Wings hyaline with brown veins, and with a brownish cloud covering the apical third of the fore wing. Its straight inner margin lies one or two cells beyond the posterior fork of the radial sector. Costal cross veins faint except in the stigmatic area where they are crowded and irregular and slightly anastomosing. Hind wings wholly hyaline.

Abdomen brown, paler beneath, a little darker on segments 1 and 2 and again on 8 and 9; 10 a little paler than 9. Middle pale line very fine and partly interrupted. Oblique marks crescentic and isolated. Joinings of the middle segments whitish, giving the abdomen an obscurely ringed appearance. Tails pale brown, ringed with dark brown on the joinings. Middle tail one-fourth as long as the others.

Genitalia yellowish amber. Penes separated by a goblet-shaped cleft. Reflexed spur strongly bent and its dilated tip extending below the level of the cleft between the penes. Lobes of the forceps base separated by a sharply V-shaped cleft and subtruncate on their apices (see fig. 135).

This species seems to differ from cupidus (now a synonym of Leptophlebia cupida) by the apical brown cloud on the fore wings and by the more nearly uniform coloration of the abdominal segments. The alternating darker and lighter rings on the tails are very pronounced. The depth of color of the apical cloud of the fore wing varies markedly in different specimens.