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October 27th, 2003
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Q. From W. Powell. I'm a trout fisherman who's contracted a bad case of the entomology bug - a wannabe entomologist - who's become stumped by a scarcity of good solid information about stoneflies. No fishing related texts I've seen provide the kind of detail I seek, though I haven't seen the Swisher - Richards work Stoneflies. The most useful fisherman's entomology I've encountered is either Caucci - Nastasi's Hatches II or McCafferty's Aquatic Entomology, but even these fall short of the quantity of information I'm seeking, although in reference to stoneflies, such a quantity of material as they provide would certainly represent a tremendous increase over what I have now. Can you suggest some material that I might find useful?
A.
Pat McCafferty's book is a good one and I recommend
it highly. I have not read the other two you mention
so cannot comment on them.
However, I can provide a few references that may help
you. Here they are:
As the title indicates, it emphasizes the nymphs, rather
than adults, but does present information on life
histories, etc. It has excellent keys to the nymphs,
but like any taxonomical reference, some of it becomes
outdated as taxonomists continually revise the systematics,
discover new species, etc. In fact, the last time I saw
Ken, I think he told me that a new edition of this was
either in preparation or just out. The memory starts
to go when you get my age.
A sidenote: Ken gets a lot of kidding about being the
only entomologist written up by Sports Illustrated.
He discovered that male stoneflies "drum" to attract
females; somehow, this piqued the interest of SI and
they published a story about it.
The above is the only book specifically on stoneflies
that I have in my library. The following references
are broader in scope (but narrower in detail), although
each contains information on stoneflies.
2. An Introduction to the Aquatic Insects of
North America, 3rd ed. edited by R.W. Merritt
and K.W. Cummins. Kendall/Hunt Publ. Co., 1996.
ISBN 0-7872-1761-1
This is mainly a taxonomic reference although there
is some information on biology, ecology, etc. of the
different groups. Ken Stewart (see above) wrote the
section on stoneflies. It is the most widely used
general reference for insect taxonomy.
3. Aquatic Insect Ecology. 1. Biology and Habitat
by J.V. Ward. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1992. ISBN 0-471-55007-8
A formal text covering many aspects of the biology
and ecology of aquatic insects. James never did
complete succeeding volumes, but this one has a lot
of good information.
4. An Illustraed Guide to the Mountain Stream
Insects of Colorado, 2nd ed by J.V. Ward, B.C.
Kondratieff, and R.E. Zuellig. Univ. Press of Colorado,
2002. ISBN 0-87081-653-5
A small paperback with biological and ecological
information on the fauna of Colorado streams; good
illustrations and keys to genera.
5. Streams: Their Ecology and Life by
C.E. Cushing and J.D. Allan. Academic Press, 2001.
ISBN 0-12-050340-9
I saved the best to last! Seriously, we wrote this
as a "textbook for layman" and it covers the entire
aspect of stream ecology. There is a chapter on
insects, with a section on stoneflies; most of the
information was gleaned from the above references
plus McCafferty's book.
~ C. E. (Bert) Cushing, aka Streamdoctor 105 W. Cherokee Dr. Estes Park, CO 80517 Phone: 970-577-1584 Email: streamdoctor@aol.com
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