Science topic
Aquatic Insects - Science topic
Explore the latest questions and answers in Aquatic Insects, and find Aquatic Insects experts.
Questions related to Aquatic Insects
I'm an undergraduate student in biology, and I study aquatic insect ecology with a focus on biodiversity and conservation, ecotoxicology, and trophic relationships. Scientific materials on the evolution of aquatic insects would be important for a better overall understanding. However, I'm having difficulty finding these materials. Does anyone have any recommendations?
Some aquatic insect and juvenile fish were infected with cercariae then I need to extract next metacercariae stage from their tissue ...
Water quality of a stream can be measured with the help of physical and chemical parameters experimenting along with the biotic index study of the insects inhabiting in it. How this study can be relate with the disease ecology?
Hello everyone,
here a few pictures of an anophthalmic aquatic insect, I am unable to identify.
It was found in a small brook and lives in fastflowing hygropetric environment. Region: Jura mountains, Switzerland, 860 m asl.
Dorso-ventrically flattened, no eyes, no antennae, six short legs, white patches on the edges of the dorsal segments, long thorns laterally on the ventral segments. Could be some coleoptera larva?
In advance many thanks for any suggestion.





Dear colleagues, I am specialist form Chironomidae, but not much familiar with the midge larvae from the other families. I have one, strange to me, from spring in mountains from Kosovo. Would you help me with the identification? Maybe you could give me at least the family or maybe genus or species?





These eggs (?) are quite confused to identification under the light microscope. My friend who has research project about the diet composition of Celebes halfbeak, Nomorhamphus liemi found these things in their digestive tract. We thought these are maybe insect eggs, or some microorganisms' eggs, according to the main diet of this fish is insects (larvae insects in river bodies). So, here are some photos of the "eggs", sorry for the limited photos we had.
Thank you.

I found this insect in the digestive tract content of Hypoatherina temminckii (marine fish). The sampling location in seagrass waters of Karang Congkak Island, Kepulauan Seribu (Seribu Island), Indonesia. I can't identify the insect groups, I just suppose this is part of Diptera but have never seen marine (or semi-aquatic) insects in my sampling location.


I have a data set of an insect community composition (17 insect species, raw abundance data, sampled 5 times over 60 days within 24 tanks( 4 replicates). There were 3 treatments( free fish, caged fish, absent fish) involved with 2 levels (open and closed tanks) for each treatment.
And my question is does community composition and diversity change over time? And if so, are these changes different under different treatments?
I am considering to use bray-curtis index(BCI) to address this question. However by looking BCI up, it seems that BCI calculates coeffiecients between different sites(spatial distances). If that's true, my dataset doesn't have sites. I was wondering if it's possible that replicates or treatments can be considered at sites (spatial distance)?
Or is PERMANOVA a better way to answer this question?
(a preview of what my dataset looks like in is in the jpeg file)
I'm working on an aquatic insect that produces silk and I would like to know if every silk has a composition of fibroin (highest percentage) and sericin. Thank you!
The insect was found under the stone in small river in Montenegro. Thanks in advance.

We will be collecting and keeping stonefly, caddisfly, and mayfly naiads. Thanks for any advice or recommended literature.
I would like to analyze a test of aquatic insects, indicator species of headwaters.
These individuals were collected from the walls of an experimental aquarium. The organisms living in the experimental aquarium are marine amphipods. The aquarium has a closed-circuit filter system, the salinity of the water is ~ 36 ‰ and the replacement saline water is created by using artificial salts.



For dispersal from one waterbody to another or perhaps even from one catchment to another, aquatic insects follow the stream and/or suppose to use the polarization visibility of the watersurface. But is it also possible that insects can smell water? I discussed this with a colleague just today during a lecture on dispersal of aquatic insects from one waterbody to another. Is it possible that adult insects move to another waterbody/stream over land using their smell to find water?
It was collected with a plankton net in an estuary. It is about 10 mm length.


I work primarily in Arkansas. I know there's no field guide or anything that would be the snail equivalent of Merritt and Cummins Introduction to Aquatic Insects, but some regional resources for the SE U.S. would be very helpful in my current position. I have never found a lot of good resources for this group when it comes to learning field identification and would like to include these in future biological inventory work.
Looking to sample net spinning caddisflies in deep water but also want to look at colonisation at different depths. I am thinking of using a pole eg 5 m with multiple Hester-Dendy attached along its length.
Thanks in advance.
Recently I came across a Hyphydrus specimen from Slovakia, which I at first glance thought would be H. ovatus. Nevertheless there seem to be some discrepancies, mainly a distinct central suture on each elytra (similar to H. aubei), which doesnt fit to the H. ovatus characteristics, despite similar appearence (overall reddish colour, with no distinct colour patterns). Could it be H. anatolicus maybe?

I am doing research on aquatic insect’s larva and I carried out sampling during sunrise and sunset using kick net. I am wondering whether the sunrise and sunset will affect the composition of aquatic insects or not?
This invertebrate was found in the guts of a juvenile dace from the River Teme, Worcestershire, England. From a mudstone river.
I am looking for a key for Thienemanniella (Orthocladiinae) of the Holarctic region, based on larval characters. Can anyone provide me with one? Or point out relevant literature I might have missed? Thanks!
I'm curious if anyone has used the positive relationship between latitude and the length-dry mass power coefficients for aquatic insects found in this paper (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259550032_The_biogeography_of_insects%27_length-dry_mass_relationships) and compared it with northern european populations?
Use of the Encyclopedias of Aquatic Insects of South America
Dear Everyone!
I am stuck with the ID of this aquatic insect larva. My thoughts are that it is a caddisfly (Insecta: Trichoptera).
The larva appared caseless in the sample and we tried to ID it with the keys of Waringer & Graf (1997, 2013). But we ran into dead end by all caseless groups.
I would be extremely thankful for any kind of help, at any stages of identification.
Best regards,
Peter

There is little literature about the diet of Ochthebius beetles and some suggestions that they may be predatory. They are extremely abundant in hypersaline systems, and we need to understand their interactions with brine shrimps Artemia. Has anyone found evidence that their larvae can feed on Artemia cysts or other resting eggs of crustaceans, as has been described for Anacaena larvae (Dimentman & Spira 1982 Hydrobiologia)?
Mostly biotic indices I have found all based on lotic ecosystems. Only Nepal lake biotic index (NLBI) is the only index I came across that can be used in lentic ecosystems.
This larva was collected (among many others) from a small stream in West Hungary. I have tried to identify it, but marks given by the keys i have does not fit for the specimens.
A fact that makes this case more difficult, that the abdomen is completely missing so the gills cannot be used for more accurate identification.
I have uploaded some detail pictures which represent marks and traits.
Thank you in advance for the help!



These cyst like structures have been recovered from surface samples collected from a tropical lake bed in high abundance.
+5
I am interested in understanding how the process of dispersal acts on the structure of macroinvertebrate communities in headwaters streams.
I found some larvae on my Culex oviposition traps and observed them to be predatory to other mosquito larvae as well as cannibalistic to other of its instars. The larva is slightly larger than of common mosquitoes but smaller than Toxorhynchites. Could not produce a clearer pic as of the moment. Thank you!
I am supposed to have new species of Chironomidae for Moldova according to Fauna Europaea database, but I want to be completely sure and looking for any papers concerning Chironomidae for this country. Could you help me?
I'm studying the diet of the african clawed frog (Xenopus laevis) in Portugal and I've found these structures in a few stomachs but I can't identify them, given that they don't seem to belong to any of the other items that appear in the same stomachs. This frog's diet is mostly composed by benthic and nektonic prey but they also eat terrestrial invertebrates.
Does anyone know of some arthropod with similar structures in any stage?
Thanks in advance!
We want to mark boatmen (Corixidae) to study how individuals move within a pond. We have evidence that they move very little. We tried permanent markers but they can rub anywhere on their body with their legs, and they quickly rub off the mark. Does anyone have any suggestions about a suitable method?
I'm looking for a kind of analysis with order to study the communities structure of insects aquatic before and after discontinuity habitat in streams
It was attached on the leaves of eelgrass Zostera marina in May in a lagoon. We found them in May, when temperature was about 16oC. We collected them and brought them back to lab. After the bubles broke, the eggs changed as the figure showed.

mostly searchging for papers about chironomids, but not only, also all the others invertebrates.
I'm raising larvae of dragonflies, and several specimens pretend to be dead when I change the water or when I touch them. Could this be a defense mechanism to avoid predators? I have been looking for information but apparently this is not very common mechanism with this order.
I have the Askew: Dragonflies of Europe, 2004. But the damselfly, Coenagrion ornatum, that I want to study is not in it. Can someone help me with a few good identification keys?
I had a paper which suggested a brand, but for the life of me, I can not find it again, either in my files or globally. Papilio produces one (http://www.papilio.com/inkjet%20waterproof%20adhesive%20film%20media.html), but none of their listed applications are actually underwater (I've put in an email to them regarding this).