How far could a mayfly travel in a day?
Abstract
This paper aims to determine how far the common mayfly, Ephemeroptera, could travel within its 24-hour subimago phase. This was achieved through two methods; both the analysis of literature values and by scaling down the known velocity of a comparable insect – the ruddy darter dragonfly, Sympetrum sanguineum. The velocity of the common mayfly was found to be 4.065 ms-1, meaning that the maximum distance that could have been covered in 24 hours was approximately 351.22 km.
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