What is strange about adult mayflies?
Biology · Middle School · Mon Jan 18 2021
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Adult mayflies exhibit a unique and rather strange feature in their life cycle: they have an extremely short lifespan once they reach adulthood. Mayflies spend most of their life in a larval stage, living underwater for as long as a year. However, once they emerge as adults, their life can be as short as a few hours to a couple of days. What's truly peculiar is that during this brief adult stage, mayflies don't eat; in fact, they don't even have functional mouths. Their only purpose during this phase is to reproduce. They emerge, mate, lay eggs, and then die shortly after