Mayfly Species Paraleptophlebia praepedita (Mahogany Duns)

This is an all brown species without color pattern, with only varying depths of tint. Top of head and thorax and base of abdomen dark brown, with the sides and the middle of the abdomen and all the appendages paler brown. Fore legs darker than the others; all legs darker at the knees. Wings sub-hyaline with brown veins; costal cross veins few and faint, those of the stigmatic area short, simple and regular.

Abdomen paler on the middle segments darkening toward both ends. Spiracles indicated by minute and faint brownish dots. The 9th sternite is very long, one-half longer than wide, carrying the forceps far to rearward. The first segment of the forceps is divided by a basal constriction which sets off a sub-segment one-fourth as long as wide. Penes as long as the forceps, separated at half their length by a narrow, V-shaped cleft, flattened horizontally in their apical third and outcurving, and bearing a minute posteriorly-directed triangular tooth at the tip. At two-thirds of their length there arises a pair of reflexed spurs that curve outward and upward to rounded tips. These spurs are about one-third as long as the main segment of the forceps (see fig. 134). Tails nearly uniform pale brown.