המועדפים של cmiller23

My 5555th observation!!

Caddisfly is a best guess, there were dozens of these little guys in the creek (see last photo), each one had a stack of cut up pieces of Coast Live Oak leaves for camoflage. Watching them all move around was like a scene from a ghibli movie. Grid is .5cm squares.

When I IDd this I used the 5th Ed. of Merritt, Cummins & Berg's Introduction to Aquatic Insects of North America so that's mainly what I used in IDing though I noticed a difference in the 4th Ed. which I will mention in a bit.

Here are the major characteristics I see when I identified this one: gills on abdominal segment II neither operculate nor semioperculate and similar to those on succeeding segments, gills present on abdominal segments I-V/VII or whatever (this one is missing some gills but you get the idea), body flattened and mandibles visible dorsally, what looks like lanceolate unfringed forked gills that end in a point (at least not oval/heart shaped). This takes me to Leptophlebiidae.

From this family, here are the notable characteristics: labrum much narrower than head capsule (the labrum is visible in the 4th and 5th image, the pill-shaped feature on the front-most part of the head), abdominal gills forked/bilamellate. As the key goes on iirc I am able to rule out many things based on not occurring in or near TX or based on features that differ from my specimen, so this basically takes us to Farrodes vs. Thraulodes.

The 4th and 5th editions differ in their distinguishing of Farrodes vs. Thraulodes. Photo 13 shows the 4th ed. key split which uses: (1) a gill feature which I am not a huge fan of because their description sounds difficult to parse at least for me, (2) notches on the labrum which I am also not a huge fan of since you apparently have to plate it to see, and (3) claws in Farrodes have 14 or more denticles with an enlarged apical denticle (not the tarsi but before the tarsi if that makes sense) which is not the case in Thraulodes. Photo 14 shows the 5th ed. key split (photos 15 and 16, the last two photos, are also from the 5th ed.) which only uses differing morphology of the labrum in distinguishing them. I am a fan of using the labrum since that is the most recent key, but the claws too, since these features are readily visible and differ between these genera.

So, looking at the 5th ed. split (photo 14), I would say the lateral margins (left and right sides) of the labrum (photos 4-5) do appear angular (at least not round) like the figure in the 5th ed. (2nd to last photo), which points to Thraulodes. When photographing the labrum dorsally (from above) since the labrum always seems to angle downwards away from the camera I found it helpful to prop the head upwards on a small rock so the rest of the body is pointing downwards and the labrum and head is as flat to the camera as possible.

Looking at the 4th edition split regarding the claw (my pics are the claws on both of the front two legs since those were the only legs on my specimen), though my pics are not great, it does not appear to have multiple denticles nor an enlarged apical denticle (for comparison, see a Farrodes claw here. The enlarged apical denticle is very visible: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/219409794). This also points to Thraulodes.

Note: Not directly observed by me, but identified by me and uploaded for the purposes of education