Family COLOBURISCIDAE

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Introduction

Like the families Ephemerellidae and Prosopistomatidae, the Coloburiscidae have an amphinotic distribution, with one genus, Coloburiscoides Lestage, from Australia, one, Coloburiscus Eaton, from New Zealand, and a third, Murphyella Lestage, from South America. The nymphs of all three are large, with mouthparts modified for filter feeding; Coloburiscoides is armed also with spiny abdominal gills. Coloburiscoides is restricted in distribution to the highlands of south-eastern mainland Australia, where it is widespread and abundant in upland stony streams (Riek 1970; Peters & Campbell 1991). Life histories of the three described species of Coloburiscoides were described by Campbell (1986) with development from eggs to emergence ranging from about 6 months for C. haleuticus to 3 years for C. giganteus. Suter (2009) provides a well-illustrated key to species.

Previously thought to be paraphyletic based on sanger data, Meecham and Ogden (2022) demonstrated the monophyly of the family using phylogenomic data.

General References

Campbell, I.C. 1986. Life histories of some Australian siphlonurid and oligoneurid mayflies (Insecta: Ephemeroptera). Australian Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research 37: 261-288

Meecham, J., & Ogden, T. 2022. Is Coloburiscidae (Ephemeroptera) monophyletic? A comparison of datasets. Diversity 14: 1-9

Peters, W.L. & Campbell, I.C. 1991. Ephemeroptera (Mayflies). pp. 279-293 in CSIRO (ed.). The Insects of Australia. A textbook for students and research workers. Melbourne : Melbourne University Press Vol. 1 xiii 542 pp.

Riek, E.F. 1955. Revision of the Australian mayflies (Ephemeroptera). I. Subfamily Siphlonurinae. Australian Journal of Zoology 3: 266-280

Suter, P.S. 2009. Coloburiscidae Identification keys. TRIN Publication [details incomplete].

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