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Nemoura cambrica


This proved a little challenging to ID. At first the cerci didn't look like they had any hooks or points, but I thought I'd glimsped one as I was focusing in on them so rotated them to look at them from a different angle. It then appeared that they had clear points on both sides, but angled in different directions so it never looked pick-axe shaped as in cinerea. But then I managed to get it at an angle where I could see points on both sides so tentatively concluded that it was cinerea. But I couldn't see anything in the abdomen that looked like the diagram in the key for the epiproct for cinerea - nor for cambrica/erratica which it would have to be if it wasn't cinerea (there were hairs on the base of the toe but I couldn't see any at the tip of the toe, so couldn't decide between cambrica and erratica on the cerci). Eventually I realised that if I tilted the capsule I had extracted on one end I could see an arrangement that looked something like the diagrams in the book. It most closely matched the picture and description for cambrica, and shared features that seem to be diagnostic of that, particularly the sinuous twisted bits that I think are paraprocts.

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male Nemoura cambrica showing cercus (4 orientations) and genital capsule (at 3 levels of tilting), Pensthorpe (Norfolk, UK), 15th May 2023