Mayflies of China
Mayflies (Insecta: Ephemeroptera) are a group of ancient, unique and fascinating insects. They have a long series of plesiomorphic and autapomorphic characters which contribute valuably to reconstruction of origin and evolution of winged insects.
Further, mayflies are beautiful creatures. The shine,relatively light bodies and long plus segmented terminal filaments make their flight movements elegant and outstanding.
The imagos of mayflies have a brief living period, usually several hours to one day. This “one day living” feature let various poets and writer in several nations moved and sorrowed. Many poems and tributes have created to them in China.
However, the scientific research on mayfly began late and moved slowly in our nation. By the end of 1999, only less then 250 species have been reported, many of them were mis-identified, and usually only one life stage have been known. But in recent years, the research on Chinese mayflies have boomed, more than 30 papers on this issue have been published in less than 5 years, several of them are valuable to the phylogeny, origin and biogeography of Ephemeroptera, for example, those on the Chinese Neoephemera, Vietnamella, Siphluriscus.
In order to boost this kind of research, introduce knowledge of mayfly to the ordinary people, and improve the cooperation between native and international colleagues, we establish this working website on Chinese mayflies.