Emergence phenology of Tasmanian mayflies (Ephemeroptera) in a first-order creek and comparison with northern hemisphere confamilials
Ronald E. Thresher
A B *
A CSIRO Oceans & Atmosphere, GPO Box 1538, Hobart, Tas. 7001, Australia.
B Present address: SF Tech, 50 Bramble Street, Ridgeway, Tas. 7054, Australia.
Marine and Freshwater Research 73(12) 1489-1498 https://doi.org/10.1071/MF22131
Submitted: 9 July 2022 Accepted: 5 September 2022 Published: 17 October 2022
© 2022 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)
Abstract
Context: Australian mayflies are hypothesised to differ from those in the Northern Hemisphere by having longer, more variable emergence seasons that overlap more widely among taxa.
Aim: To test this hypothesis by comparing the behaviour of related northern and southern hemisphere species in similar habitats and at similar spatial scales.
Methods: Emergence dates were recorded fortnightly over two consecutive years, one ‘warm’ and one ‘cool’, in a rocky creek in south-eastern Tasmania, and at a coarser scale for Tasmania as whole, spanning an ∼20-year period. The results are compared with emergence patterns at two sites in the northern hemisphere climatically similar to Tasmania.
Key results: Durations of emergence seasons in Tasmania did not differ significantly at either the single site or whole of island scales from those in the northern hemisphere, but unlike in the latter, the start of emergence does not appear to be temperature-dependent.
Conclusions: Apparent regional differences are likely to result primarily from climatically inappropriate comparisons rather than from fundamental differences in behaviour.
Implications: Differences in the factor(s) that cue emergence suggest that the life histories of mayflies in Tasmania, and possibly elsewhere in Australia, are determined less by physiology than by aquatic ecology.
Keywords: Australia, Baetidae, Britain, climate, emergence, habitat, Leptophlebiidae, quiescence, temperature-dependence, USA.
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