Family BAETIDAE

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Introduction

The extremely widespread family Baetidae occurs on all continents and many islands, but is absent from New Zealand. Eight genera are recorded from Australia. Bungona Harker, Edmundsiops Lugo-Ortiz & McCafferty and Offadens Lugo-Ortiz & McCafferty are endemic while Cloeon Leach, Centroptilum Eaton and Baetis Leach are cosmopolitan and Pseudocloeon Klapálek is distributed throughout South-East Asia. Although the genus Baetis is still recognised Dean & Suter (1996) questioned its presence in Australia.

Baetids are probably the most poorly studied of the mayfly families worldwide and the Australian fauna is no exception. Undoubtedly there are several genera and many new species yet to be described from Australia (Suter 1997). Ecological studies are limited with life histories for a species of Cloeon (Marchant 1982) in the tropics and species of “Baetis” from temperate Australia (Suter & Bishop 1979; Marchant et al. 1984). Development is continuous in the tropics with development from eggs to adults as short as 1 month but in temperate streams the development ranges between 5–10 months.

(Lugo-Ortiz & McCafferty 1998; Lugo-Ortiz & McCafferty 1999; Lugo-Ortiz et al. 1999; Suter 2001; Suter & Pearson 2001).

Excluded Taxa

Misidentifications

BAETIDAE: Baetis Leach, 1815 — Webb, J.M. & Suter, P.J. 2010. New combinations for the Australian species of Baetis (Ephemeroptera: Baetidae), with a new synonym. Zootaxa 2668: 63–65

General References

Dean, J.C. & Suter, P.J. 1996. Mayfly nymphs of Australia. A guide to genera. No. 7. Albury : Co-operative Research Centre for Freshwater Ecology iii 82 pp.

Marchant, R. 1982. Life spans of two species of tropical mayfly nymph (Ephemeroptera) from Magela Creek, Northern Territory. Australian Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research 33: 173-179

Marchant, R., Graesser, A., Metzeling, L., Mitchell, P., Norris, R. & Suter, P. 1984. Life histories of some benthic invertebrates from the La Trobe River, Victoria. Australian Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research 35: 793-806

Suter, P.J. 1979. The effect of temperature on the hatching time of eggs of mayflies (Ephemeroptera) from South Australia. Newsletter of the Australian Society of Limnology 17(1): 40

Suter, P.J. 1997. Preliminary Guide to the identification of Nymphs of Australian Baetid Mayflies (Insecta: Ephemeroptera) found in flowing waters. Identification Guide No 14. CRC Freshwater Ecology.

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