Mayfly???

[Prajwal J Ullal]

One of the first postings taken from the Macro lens. Awaiting a photography walk on the weekend to explore its capabilities, and also mine, for the time being trying out the lens capturing the visitors I get at home.
One interesting insect I had been seeing for few weeks has been this one, there were two similar insects I had spotted in a same area of the room two subsequent days. This composite image is a compilation of the two insects I had captured. It seems to be a mayfly, but what I am interested to know is whether these two are the same insect or different.

EXIF:
Canon EOS 550D
Canon 100mm f/2.8 USM macro
F/4 and 11(for bottom image)
Shutterspeed: 1/200 and 1/125
ISO 100
Inbuilt flash used
Location: Dahisar, Mumbai

[Abhishek Jamalabad]

Yes, mayflies. I cannot say for sure that they are the same species, but it looks like that to me. The lower one is a male. Its unique eyes are of a specialised type called "turbinate eyes"- with a smaller lower portion (pale with dark bands) and greatly enlarged upper portion (the brown raised part). Another feature of the male is the longer front legs.

I am not sure what purpose the specialised eyes serve. There are 2 mayfly families that have those type of eyes- Leptophlebiidae and Baetidae. You could use this information, along with location etc. to do some research on the net to arrive at a possible ID.

Usually, composite images are not allowed on this forum, and natural surroundings are preferred in the images. However, we can make an exception in this case as this is very good documentation to compare the male and female in almost identical settings. Nicely done.

TFS

[Mrudul Godbole]

Nice capture. Congrats on your new lens. Thanks to both of you to share the details of these species. Look forward to more images from your Canon 100mm :). Thanks for sharing.

[Roopak Gangadharan]

nice ...this is a good comparison image.

Thanks for some interesting info Abhishek.

TFS
Roopak