Summer Fishfly

Fascinating facts about the Summer Fishfly

• The Summer fishfly is found across a broad swathe of North America, inhabiting eastern Canada and the United States. Its range begins in Maine at the northeastern edge of the continent and extends southward to the Florida counties of Alachua, Liberty and Santa Rosa. From there the distribution pushes westward until it reaches Kansas, marking the western limit of its known habitat.
• The scientific name of the Summer fishfly was established over two and a half centuries ago when Carl Linnaeus first described the species. He recorded it in his 1763 publication Centuria Insectorum, providing the original taxonomic foundation that is still recognised today. Subsequent revisions have listed several synonyms, including Hemerobius pectinicornis and Chauliodes virginiensis, reflecting the historical changes in its classification.
• The mesothorax of the Summer fishfly functions as a travelling nursery for the larvae of Plecopteracoluthus downesi. These larvae attach to the fishfly and remain there for their entire development, feeding, growing and eventually pupating while perched on the host's thorax. Because the larvae complete every life-stage on the fishfly, the relationship is classified as commensal, with the larvae benefiting without harming the adult.
• Commonly called the Summer fishfly, it belongs to the fishfly group and is native to North America. It occurs across a wide swathe of eastern Canada and the United States, reaching as far north as Maine and extending south to Alachua, Liberty and Santa Rosa counties in Florida, with its western limit in Kansas.

Sources

Every fact above was checked against these pages, and kept only where one of them states it.

• Wikipedia

At a glance

About the Summer Fishfly

In the warm, languid air of summer evenings, the Summer Fishfly dances, its delicate, lacy wings beating in a hypnotic rhythm as it flits from water's edge to nearby vegetation. With an ethereal, almost ghostly quality, this nocturnal nomad navigates the twilight world, its large, glowing eyes drinking in the fading light as it searches for a mate or a meal. As it alights upon a leaf or branch, its slender, elongated body seems to shimmer and quiver, like a living, breathing embodiment of the season's very essence.

More insects and spiders to discover

Browse Feravox