THEAUTHORBLOG

Posted by THE AUTHOR, April 11, 2012 at 01:16 am, in THEORY

I made a grave mistake in my last post dear reader.

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I know, I know you probably knew the moment that you read it that it was wrong, but I in my shortsightedness could not see the forest for the trees.

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My short piece on overcoming suffering and their representation in religions?

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No no no dear reader

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Mayflies, dear reader, mayflies.

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As I will heinously quote “Seven days may not sound like a lot reader, but think of it like this, in the time it will take for me to regain connection over seven generations of mayflies will have lived, fucked, and died.”

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This is a falsehood dear reader to the highest extent.

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In my vain effort to create a simile connecting a mayflies day-old lifespan to my soon-to-be time away from the web, I had completely neglected to think of the reproduction cycle of the mayfly.

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I imagine that this complete lack of thought was due to severe sleep deprivation and shall thus not be overly critical, I do however feel that I need to make this up to you dear reader.

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So I shall to the best of my capability give a short, but informative speech on the life of a mayfly.

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The mayfly is a group name for aquatic insects belonging to the order ephemeroptera, closely related to insects such as the dragonfly, mayflies have a life cycle slightly different from their killer cousins.

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The mayfly as we know them is in fact the final stage of their lifecycle, a lifecycle which could last up to two years in total.

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The mayfly starts as an egg often laid in groups of dozens or tens of thousands depending on the species, after a period lasting either weeks or years depending on environmental conditions the eggs will hatch releasing nymphs into the wild.

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Nymphs will in turn live anywhere from a few weeks to a couple of years continually molting over that period of time, a nymphs final molt will create what is called the subimago, a temporary stage in a mayflies' life were it grows wings so that it can fly out of the body of water that it was born in.

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After doing so it will molt again and turn into the imago, usually alongside thousands if not millions of others, this is what we usually consider as the mayfly. During this last period of their life a mayfly will fuck close to a body of water, lay eggs if they can and promptly keel over, typically this happens in a period of a few hours to a single day.

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One species has got a bit more stamina, with the males lasting an entire two days.

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I’m sure they use that one often to impress.

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In either case, that’s the mayfly, or rather a rough approximation of the groups’ behavior.

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This one was a bit more clinical than usual, but I needed to correct my mistakes dear reader.

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If all goes well I should release the second part of my previous post in a few hours.