Baetidae is a family of

mayflies Mayflies (also known as shadflies or fishflies in Canada and the upper Midwestern United States, as Canadian soldiers in the American Great Lakes region, and as up-winged flies in the United Kingdom) are aquatic insects belonging to the orde ...

with about 1000 described species in 110 genera distributed worldwide. These are among the smallest of mayflies, adults rarely exceeding 10 mm in length excluding the two long slender tails and sometimes much smaller, and members of the family are often referred to as small mayflies or small minnow mayflies. Most species have long oval forewings with very few cross veins (see Comstock-Needham system) but the hindwings are usually very small or even absent. The males often have very large

eye Eyes are organs of the visual system. They provide living organisms with vision, the ability to receive and process visual detail, as well as enabling several photo response functions that are independent of vision. Eyes detect light and conv ...

s, shaped like turrets above the head (this is known as "turbinate condition"). Baetids breed in a wide range of waters from

lake A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much large ...

s and

stream A stream is a continuous body of water, body of surface water Current (stream), flowing within the stream bed, bed and bank (geography), banks of a channel (geography), channel. Depending on its location or certain characteristics, a stream ...

s to ditches and even water butts. The nymphs are strong swimmers and feed mainly on

algae Algae (; singular alga ) is an informal term for a large and diverse group of photosynthetic eukaryotic organisms. It is a polyphyletic grouping that includes species from multiple distinct clades. Included organisms range from unicellular mic ...

. The oldest members of the family date to the Late Cretaceous, with '' Myanmarella'' and '' Vetuformosa'' known from the

Cenomanian The Cenomanian is, in the ICS' geological timescale, the oldest or earliest age of the Late Cretaceous Epoch or the lowest stage of the Upper Cretaceous Series. An age is a unit of geochronology; it is a unit of time; the stage is a unit in the s ...

aged Burmese amber, and '' Palaeocloeon'' from the

Santonian The Santonian is an age in the geologic timescale or a chronostratigraphic stage. It is a subdivision of the Late Cretaceous Epoch or Upper Cretaceous Series. It spans the time between 86.3 ± 0.7 mya (million years ago) and 83.6 ± 0.7 mya. The ...

aged

Taimyr amber Taymyr or Taimyr may refer to: Places *Taymyr Peninsula, a peninsula in Siberia *Taymyr Gulf *Taymyra, a river in the Taymyr Peninsula *Lake Taymyr *Taymyr Island, an island in the Kara Sea *Taymyr Autonomous Okrug, a former federal subject of Rus ...

References

Chinery, Michael Michael Chinery (born 1938, in London) is an English naturalist. He studied in Cambridge where he graduated in natural sciences and anthropology. He edits '' Cecidology'', the journal of the British Plant Gall Society The British Plant Gall ...

''Collins Guide to the Insects of Britain and Western Europe'' 1986 (Reprinted 1991) * McGavin, George C. ''Insects and Spiders'' 2004
Fauna Europaea

* Mayflies Insect families {{mayfly-stub

See also

References