[Dogghound]

As an example of what I meant in the previous thread, Lance said pond olive which I belive is a generic name for the Cloeon genus. Its a relatively easy genus to ID as they only have two wings (or 2 very reduced wings) appose to 4 which most mayflies have. Now the part where you need to see the wings becomes evident when you want to get the ID to a species. The two common ones in ponds which this is likely to be are Cloeon dipterum and Cloeon simile. The difference between the two is C.dipterum has 3-5 cross veins in the pterostigma (a small cell on the edge of the wing) and C.simile has 9-11 cross veins. So you can see you would probrably need a microscope to tell which it is.

Also of interest this one has recently emerged you can see the wings are a grey colour, it will moult again before it breeds when its wings will become clear this is when they are at their best to ID.

I hope this makes sense and im not sounding like a kill joy.