Urban wildlife mystery maybe

[urbpan]

This was one of maybe a dozen winged insects, of different sizes and apparent stages of development, adhered to a rock in Babbling Brook (the stream that leaves Ward's Pond and becomes the Muddy River). I thought maybe they were very slowly emerging imagos (adult insects) and pupae. I sent this picture to an insect id community and mostly they were stumped too. The best explanation I got was that these were female caddisflies which had died shortly after laying eggs in the water. The white growth (someone supposed) was a fungus consuming the dead insects' bodies. It seems plausible to me.

I tried to figure out if this was a normal part of the caddisfly life cycle, but I couldn't tell. Interestingly, there's a lot of information about caddisflies online from the perspective of people who make pretend insects with which to catch fish. They had some good things to say, but I didn't get my questions answered. The log cabin caddsfly entry I did for the 365 project (click above link) included pictures of caddisfly larvae collected a short distance downstream from the mystery insects.

Anyone else have any bright ideas?

Comments

[nutmeg.livejournal.com]

I saw this picture before and thought it was so weird. I will ask our taxonomist about this though it seems plausible. I also know an insect pathologist, but he specializes in viruses, but he might know about fungi.

For our larval entomology class many of his pictures for the trich section came from troutnut dot com which is all about fly fishing, as I'm sure you can imagine. I found that kind of weird and fascinating.

FROM ptosis @ Hubpages

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for ID'ing my shroom. I have bug Pics also @ http://bugguide.net/bgimage/user/37935

[chasbrown.livejournal.com]

I'm the one who answered you before. They're caddisfly females (the abdomen is more typical of females than males). They often die pretty quickly after they lay eggs. Sometimes they're lucky enough to make it up on top of the rock after they die, but most of the time I'd guess they were swept downstream. This one might have even laid its eggs above the water, but then died on the rock.

I'm a caddisfly biologists/ecologist who studies their life cycles. The fungus is likely most saprolegnia.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Caddisfly biologist! That's very cool, thanks for commenting here!