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Photo#523127
Mayfly from my bedroom - Pentagenia vittigera

Mayfly from my bedroom - Pentagenia vittigera
Uptown New Orleans, Orleans Parish, Louisiana, USA
May 21, 2011
Size: 3cm without cerci
Woke up the other day to find this sub-imago on the curtain of my bedroom.

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Mayfly from my bedroom - Pentagenia vittigera Mayfly from my bedroom - Pentagenia vittigera

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Pentagenia vittigera
Mark-

Lloyd Gonzales identifies your bedroom visitor as a Pentagenia vittigera female subimago, and also made the following comments regarding it on my flyfishing entomology forum:

"Although (not Stenonema femoratum as the photographer believed, I thought that a specimen of the only extant NA representative of Palingeniidae was interesting enough to share (on your forum). (P. robusta is considered to be recently extinct.) When present, the four dots across the forewing are a unique trait of P. vittigera, and I believe that the name of the synonymous species P. quadripunctata (also) reflects that trait."

 
Well that's awesome!
I know better, but I often fall prey to the convenience of leafing through the guide and placing things where they look like they belong. In this case it seemed like >99% of the very large mayflies with this general appearance were S. femoratum, and I figured that something randomly showing up in my bedroom in the middle of a city was probably not going to be anything uncommon. Thanks for following up on it for me, I'm excited to have found something unusual.

That being said, I've had a good run of finding unusual things in my little house! The key is to have lots of holes so the insects can get inside! :)

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