FINDING A MATE.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4754, 22 September 1924, Page 3

FINDING A MATE.

THE MAY FLY'S LOVE DANCE. Tlie May fly is said to live but a day. It may, however, live for a week or longer, but it cannot live very long, for it begins its aerial life with arophied mouth parts, and can never eat. Just how long the fragile creature will exist depends largely on circumstances, writes John L. Ward in the "Daily Mail”. If it finds a mate immediately after its emergence from the water it may not live more than a few hours. If, on the other hand, it is content with alternating intervals of flight and rest it may live for several days. Its buoyant, winged life after its “rise” is nothing more than a marriage festivity. When the hour of the celebration arrives the flies emerge in vast swarms and the air above the tstream rapidly becomes a maze of rythmic dancers, all recklessly blazing away their last moments of life in the excitement of finding a mate. They couple in the air, and after the eggs are scattered in the waters their energies weaken and they fall prey to the fishes below. The May fly is frequently referred to as a type of brief and ineffectual life, but its is a dangerous exampl,e for the moraliser, for, as insects go, it its one of the longest lived species. I have watched and photographed all the stages in the development of the gnat—from the egg until the nymph has changed to the winged fly—in 14 days, but if I attempted to do that with a May fly I might be occupied for three years or more before the winged insect had matured. The May fly’s real life is spent as a nymph below water for one, two, three, or four years, according to the species, and its few hours or days of. winged life are but the grand finale. As a general rule insects cease to grow on attaining .the winged ptate; they are then adult. Consequently a smali, fly is always a small fly; it can never grow larger. The May fly provides the extraordinary exception to this rule, for, unique among insects, it moults another skin after having developed wings capable of flight. The first May fly .that appears is a comparatively sluggish insect veiled in grey (the duir fly of th* angler) which soon alights and slips off its “macintosh” —or, scientifically, its subimago skin —and withdraws from their grey covers wings that glisten with soap bubble-like radiance of colour, and, still more wonderful, three long tail filaments from sheaths not one-third of their length. It is thus that the May fly “robes” for its love dance.