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3. Callibaetis Spinner Habits

With almost 40 years lake fishing experience in the Northwest (Washington) our callibaetis always seem to start hatching mid afternoon in the evening, mate overnight then the spinners start in the morning. The spinners draw the most intense "rise." I put rise in quotes because it is so delicate there it leaves almost no disturbance at all not even a sip.

Any comments? Hopefully contradictions?

Rob

Rob-

Generally, the more intense period of Callibaetis subimago emergence lasts for several hours, and takes place some time between mid-morning and mid-afternoon, whereupon both sexes retire to vegetation, awaiting a final molt, which occurs some hours later. Shortly thereafter, male imagoes form a mating swarm into which female imagoes venture to select a mate.

The male imago expires shortly following mating. However, the female imago returns to the shelter of foliage, where it remains for ~5 days, allowing the ova to fully mature within the female imago, which behavior is unique to Callibaetis(and perhaps also Cloeon) among the mayflies.

Following this period of dormancy, the female imago returns to the water and deposits her eggs, which hatch shortly following contact with the water, whereupon the female imago falls spent. This final act generally occurs near mid-morning, and constitutes the spinner fall to which you referred.

The preceding is simply offered in the interest of sharing knowledge of the unique process female Callibaetis mayflies undergo following emergence, and is not intended to rebut any of your observations, the accuracy (of which) I have no reason to doubt.

Louis-

Please notice that I made absolutely no reference to the proper pronunciation of Callibaetis :)

For your information, Roger, I believe the correct pronunciation is "Callibeeaeiaytis".

Just to clarify things for those Latin neophytes out there.

I should add, though, that there is still some debate in academic circles as to how to pronounce the letter 'c'.

-Shawn

Interesting, Shawn. Is this the pronunciation for the version of Biological Latin practiced in English-speaking countries, or is it from some other version of Latin, perhaps the one believed to have been first widely spoken?

It is the correct Latin, Roger, that's all. Glad to help.

-Shawn

Shawn-

Perhaps you could break “Callibeeaeiaytis” into its phonetically-expressed syllables for me, an example of which I quote from Louis:

Sure, Rog: "Caley-BEE-AE-I-AY-tis", with the emphasis on the middle four syllables. Remember, 'i' before 'ae' except (10 letters) after 'c', as in 'callibeeaeiaytis' - a pretty standard spelling rule, if my memory of third grade serves correctly. As I mentioned before, there is still some healthy discussion on the first part of the word, though. Most commonly, it is pronounced with a hard 'k', although there is of course the softer 's' pronunciation, and in certain parts of Spain there is also in common use a rather pompous sounding 'th'. I've even heard that some Arabs pronounce it with a gutteral 'kh', but that's likely just poor diction.

Your professor,
Shawn

Okay, Professor Shawn, now that we're really on a roll, how about the proper pronunciation for family name Baetidae?

Hmmm....Interesting pronunciation. Not how I would say it or have ever heard it pronounced. When I studied Latin in school there were basically two ways to pronounce "ae". Classical or ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation is "ay". This is how it was spoken about 2000 years ago and how it was pronounced when the Catholic Mass was said in Latin (experience as an altar boy long ago and far away). A later pronunciation and one that is more common in educational and many scientific circles is "eye" (just like what you see with).

For the past 30 some years I have always pronounced it Cal-ih-bay-tis. You can pronounce it however you like and if we can't come to terms when we're conversing, we can always refer to it as a speckled wing dun.

Regarding Baetidae, I would expect to hear it pronounced "Bay tih day". Using the other accepted Latin pronunciation I would expect to hear it said "Bye-ti-dye". I have heard the first pronunciation, but not the second. The one I most commonly hear is a mixture of the two - "Bay-tih-dye". That shouldn't be correct, but that is the most common pronunciation I've run across. That word would be, by the way, the first declension plural nominative, and the gender of the word (not the bugs, but the word) would be feminine. That same spelling is used to denote the single possessive (of baetis) but you would only know if that was the intention by the way it is used in a sentence.

Of course, we could just call those Baetidae "Blue-Winged Olives" and be done with it.

Interesting discussion!

Thanks,
Dan