**Mayfly Species Heptagenia pulla (Golden Dun)**

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Taxonomic Navigation -?-

Kingdom Animalia (Animals)

» Phylum Arthropoda (Arthropods)

» Class Insecta (Insects)

» Order Ephemeroptera (Mayflies)

» Family Heptageniidae (March Browns, Cahills, Quill Gordons)

» Genus Heptagenia

» Species pulla (Golden Dun)

Common Names

Match	Common Name
	Golden Dun
	March Brown

Pictures Below ↓

This elegant species may produce fishable hatches.

Where & When

Regions: East, Midwest

Time Of Year (?): June to October

There are conflicting accounts of the emergence dates for this species. The Leonards in Hatches II give June 2nd to August 4th as the dates for emergence in Michigan, while Caucci and Nastasi in Hatches II say it hatches from August through October. Knopp and Cormier say it hatches from mid-May through August. I don't know who is correct, but I have collected near-mature nymphs in June in northern Wisconsin.

Nymph Biology

Current Speed: Slow to medium; sometimes riffles

Substrate: Detritus (Detritus: Small, loose pieces of decaying organic matter underwater.)

Pictures of 2 Mayfly Specimens in the Species Heptagenia pulla:

Heptagenia pulla (Golden Dun) Mayfly Nymph

View 5 PicturesI used a microscope to positively identify this nymph as Heptagenia pulla. (Edit six years later: I wish I had explained why I was positive about this. It may have been based on color patterns in an angling text, which are not especially reliable for species ID anymore.)

Collected June 5, 2005 from the Long Lake Branch of the White River in Wisconsin
Added to Troutnut.com by Troutnut on May 25, 2006

Heptagenia pulla (Golden Dun) Mayfly Nymph

View 8 PicturesLike most Alaskan mayflies, this one is tricky to identify to the species level. See the discussion section for an informative chat about this one's ID. The current leaning is to call it a fairly immature Heptagenia pulla nymph, but a case has been made for Heptagenia elegantula as well.

Collected July 10, 2011 from Nome Creek in Alaska
Added to Troutnut.com by Troutnut on July 13, 2011

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Jargon Defined:

Detritus: Small, loose pieces of decaying organic matter underwater.

Emergence: The transformation of a nymph or pupa into the adult winged stage of an insect. The term may refer to the emergence of an individual, or the daily or yearly event in which all individuals of a species emerge.

Nymphs: The juvenile, underwater stages of mayflies, stoneflies, dragonflies, and damselflies and other aquatic insects whose juvenile stages are covered by hard exoskeletons. The word can also refer to the fishing flies which imitate these creatures, in which case it is used as a blanket term for flies imitating any underwater stage of an invertebrate (except for crayfish and leeches).

Useful References:

Caucci, Al and Nastasi, Bob. 2004. Hatches II. The Lyons Press.

Knopp, Malcolm and Robert Cormier. 1997. Mayflies: An Angler's Study of Trout Water Ephemeroptera . The Lyons Press.

Leonard, Justin W. and Fannie A. Leonard. 1962. Mayflies of Michigan Trout Streams. Cranbrook Institute of Science.