Life to Death to Life

Sunlight to Starlight to Sunlight

Sunlight to starlight to sunlight again as Life to Death and then Life

Twenty-four hours. Day to night to day again. We don’t reflect on this too often, but this cycle really is a lifetime for some, say a mayfly who, indeed, wakes up one morning to fly about all day but most likely will not fly at all the one following.

By the way, why is a mayfly called a May-fly anyway? Well, if you have heard that these little darlings start hatching from their water-larva state starting in May each year (to then continue to hatch, hatch, hatch through the balance of spring and most of summer) then you’ve heard right. Yup, that’s why the name. So, next time you see, or run into, a swarm of these flying critters, be assured: the days have been getting longer for a while.

It is also true that the mayfly is incredibly short-lived. Once out of the larva stage, the female mayfly gets bored with life on Earth after about five minutes, and departs this world then and there while the more long-lived male can make it through not only one day but on occasion a whopping two. But these boys don’t waste a single second of the 86,400 to 172,800 they have been allotted, and spend most if not all of them mating and reproducing.

In other words, sexing like there’s no tomorrow.

As for nicknames, I don’t know where on earth they got it from, but it’s true that there are folks in our land that refer to them as Canadian Soldiers. Why? one wonders. Not a clue. They are certainly not called that in Canada, where they’re better known as shadflies. And then the British had to weigh in with the more observant and anatomically accurate: up-winged fly.

To some, the mayfly looks like a multi-sectioned flying ant for its abdomen consists of ten individual segments. Strangely enough, some of these segments carry open-and-closeable gills (like a larva hangover). Why? you ask. Well, with so many sexual seconds to fill, perhaps they need to take a break now and then and go for a swim, only to discover that they don’t know how to. No worry, no drowning here. We have gills. I think the word is amphibious.

Actually, I think the word is sloppy evolution, in-elegant.

Most people don’t like mayflies. One people, however, loves them, and these people are called fly fishers; and they love the mayflies because from May on, a fly fisher’s favorite fly to fish with is a mayfly fly (I can say that 23 times in a row, and fast, without screwing up). You may have noticed (or not) that once the mayflies start to hatch, the avid fly fisher starts using artfully made flies resembling this flash in the insect pan. The reason? you ask.

Well, I answer, the mayfly is an extremely popular dish for many a fish, trout included, and since fish keep a close eye on the calendar and know when May rolls around, they will then lunge for anything mayfly-like and if they’re really short on their luck — or karma’s not so good — they’ll swallow an artificial one, much to the fly fisher’s delight and the trout’s dedark.

I think that’s a devious tactic, though, and should be outlawed.

Here’s another interesting mayfly tidbit: they are winged protein and are good food even for humans. What is seen as a nuisance in America is seen as a gift in Africa. Locals around Lake Victoria, for example, gather mayfly adults along with Chironomid midges to make a type of patty called ‘Kungu’. Yum. In fact, this protein-rich food is an important part of their diet.

And bakers in Malawi add them to breads and cakes. Yum, again.

Weird, you say, but did you know that children in the Congo will eat live larva that they dig out of trees, these white larvae so fat that they explode when you bite into them. No, I don’t know this from personal experience, from books. This, though, is my way of offering that there’s no accounting for taste.

So, other things (fish and humans) like to eat them. But what do they eat in turn? The answer is nada. Nothing at all. Why? you ask.

Because they don’t have mouths, I answer.

There is, in other words, no such thing as over-eating in the mayfly world; no diet issues or cookbooks. No counting calories.

Really, it stands to reason, since for adult mayflies, as different from the two-hour old adolescent nymphs, every second (except for those spent swimming slash drowning slash using gills) is earmarked for reproduction and, yes, feeding the occasional lucky fish.

They simply don’t have time to eat so they never developed functional mouths. As larvae, on the other hand, the have very good mouths indeed, which they use consuming tons and tons and tons (as a species) of algae.

I wonder if there are mayfly fly-fishers who fly-fish with algae looking flies?

Turning now to reproduction: mayflies have lots of babies. Let me restate that: mayflies have LOTS of babies. The female mayfly (who, remember, only lives about 300 seconds, spends the tail-end of those valuable seconds (having first been duly mid-air impregnated) laying anywhere from 400 to 3,000 eggs on waters surfaces. These eggs soon sink to the bottom where they eventually hatch into hungry larvae — look out algae.

Oh, I can hear the question now: How, with about five minutes’ worth of life, does the female mayfly manage to get pregnant? Well, let me enlighten you.

This is what happens:

A mayfly’s life cycle starts with a bunch of horny males forming a cloud-like swarm of “come-and-get-it” above the water for the females to fly into (and they do) to mate — in-flight, no less. The words airborne and orgy comes to mind.

The clouding male mayfly, who is equipped with elongated front legs developed for this very purpose, grabs a passing female and the pair then mate in the air, on the wing (which could be one reason they have very well-developed wings, come to think of it). Done sexing, the male lets go of the female, who now — with a precious minute or two left to live — descends to the water surface where she lays her tons of eggs.

Once done, literally spent, she then collapses on top of the water, gives up her ghost, and now, motionless with her wings spread on the water, does a different “come-and-get-it”, this time for the fish who now pick them off at their leisure.

The male mayfly (say that fast, ten times) rarely returns to the water but, as the final hours approach, instead wings off to die on dry land. Should he, however, return to the water for a late-life swim, he will not, gill-equipped as he is and as we’ve already discussed, drown.

One curious thing about mayfly eggs, by the way, is that they are extremely sensitive to pollution. They like, even demand, clean water. Even modest levels of water pollution can kill up to 80 percent of the eggs, and that is why scientists sometimes use the density of viable mayfly eggs to quickly determine the purity of the water.

I biologists are to be believed, they have been around for a long time, the mayflies, and have over the years caught the attention of many of us humans; Aristotle mentions the mayfly in his “History of Animals.” The poet George Crabbe used the mayfly as a symbol for the brevity of life. And these days many people gather to witness the swarms that form and rise during hatching season. In some regions, the number of insects is so incredibly voluminous that they show up on the local weather radar.

The selfsame biologists say that mayflies have been around since before the dinosaurs, and after more than 350 million years of trial-and-error evolution, they have now perfected what they consider the art of life. Not so sure I’m all that impressed.

They start as eggs that soon turn larvae, which after a month or so hatch into nymphs (also called naiads) who emerge from the water to then, give them an hour or two, mature into adults to reproduce and then start a family of at least 400.

That’s some schedule if you ask me. They all should wear T-shirts saying “live fast, die young.”

Taking a closer look at their development: one of the many characteristics that makes mayflies the unique insects they are is their two-step evolution from larva to adult. Hatched from the larva as a nymph the mayfly-to-be emerges from the water as a dull-colored sub-imago (or dun) that seeks shelter in bankside vegetation and trees. After an hour or so, the sub-imago now sheds its nymph skin to transform into the brightly colored imago (or spinner). It is not clear why mayflies have retained this unique step in their lifecycle; however, it is thought that they may not be able to achieve the change from nymph to sexually mature adult in one step — which doesn’t say much for mayfly intelligence, I think, if, indeed, they’ve had 350 million years to figure things out.

Some mayfly species exhibit an amazing hatching synchronicity. For example, one North American mayfly species hatches in huge numbers from the Mississippi river every year. The total number of mayflies in this hatch alone are estimated to reach 18 trillion — more than 3,000 times the number of people on earth.

Another thing is that these guys are attracted to lights from riverside towns and villages which on occasion has forced the local authorities to deploy snow clearing vehicles to remove small mountains of mayfly corpses. Not a pretty thought.

What a creature.

Of course, this is not what this Wolfku is about, it’s about our local sunlight vs. our remote suns’ lights, e.g. starlight. It’s about life to death to life again.

It’s about impermanence — a fleeting state of affairs much more easily seen and recognized among our mayfly friends than among us humans. However, if an alien species with a lifespan of, say 30,000 years took a closer look at us, and at our ridiculously short lifespan of 80 years or so, they would indeed be justified in calling us mayflies.

It’s all relative, isn’t it?

© Wolfstuff