Posted by Keith Short on 30-09-2016 12:45
#1
I have been searching the margins of a local lake for the larvae/pupae of Tachytrechus vorax, a dolichopodidae species.
I have not had great success. I started my search in late August when many adults were present on the thin sand beach on one side of the lake. I brought home some lake mud scraped from a small section of the beach and have been observing it carefully. There is not much activity to observe in "real time" but time lapse movies of the mud have helped me realize how incredibly active the mud actually is.
Here is a link to a Youtube movie of the small lake recreation that has been "living" in my garage fro the past 7 weeks.
I photograph at ~ 1 frame every 15 seconds and the movie was stitched together with 15 frames per second. This 1 minute movie represents several hours of activity in a small section of the paint-roller pan "lake".
The only larvae that I have approximately identified are crane fly larvae and soldier fly larvae. The video is best viewed with "high def" settings.
https://youtu.be/...
Keith