March brown
The March brown is a mayfly, a delicate insect with see-through wings and two long tails. It is one of the first insects to appear at the end of winter, rising out of clean, fast rivers. Grown-up mayflies cannot eat, so they live only a short time.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
Mayflies are the only insects with two grown-up stages. They shed their skin one more time after they can already fly.
Coming out of the water and flying away can take it as little as 30 seconds, so hungry fish have less time to catch it.
Its first grown-up stage can last up to four days, longer than in any other mayfly.
Fishermen have been making fake March browns as fishing flies for more than 500 years.
It needs very clean water with lots of oxygen, so finding it means the river is healthy.
Most asked questions about March brown
?How long does a March brown live?
The grown-up lives only a few days. It cannot eat and dies after it lays its eggs.
?Where does the March brown live?
In clean, fast rivers of Central and Northern Europe, including Britain and Ireland.
?Why is the March brown famous?
Anglers have copied it as a fishing fly for hundreds of years, because trout love to eat it.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Rhithrogena germanica
- Named by
- Eaton
- Group
- Other insects
- Family
- Heptageniidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Ephemeroptera > Heptageniidae
- Lives on
- Europe
- Also known as
- March brown mayfly
Where the facts come from
- Rhithrogena germanica (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Richard Bartz , Munich aka Makro Freak. CC BY-SA 2.5, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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