First of all, there are lots and lots of different midge species (several thousand actually), enough that for practical purposes you’d be crazy to try and differentiate them.  Even our most anal streamside entomologist friends don’t try this feat - (or maybe they just don’t talk about around us….).  We will look briefly at entomology in a few days just so you can drop the latin names when you need to…..

Everyone knows there are lake dwelling species and different river dwelling species.  Lake midges can be quite a bit larger than river midges, though the principles of their life cycle are othewise the same.   Midges are very imporant cogs in the ecosystem wheels of both river and lake systems, and the number of midges in the biosphere is staggering - tens of thousands of midge larva and pupa inhabit a single square meter of suitable lake or stream bottom.

Basically midges follow the same life cycle that we’re all used to thinking about - larva, pupa, and adults.  We’ll look more at the life cycle of midges in the next post.

Photo courtesy of Troutnut.com.

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Tags: Bugs: Midges