EDMUNDS: EPHEMEROPTERA 509 



D. E. Kimmins outlined a program for a complete new catalogue and sought the 

 collaboration of eighteen specialists and the loan of Ris's manuscript. A number 

 of preliminary papers on nomenclature by Mr. Cowley were published but ap- 

 parently AVorld War II stopped further activity and the work has not, to my 

 knowledge, been resumed. 



EPHEMEROPTERA 



George F. Edmunds, Jr. 



University of Utah, Salt Lake City 



Of the estimated 2,000 or more species now known in the order Ephemerop- 

 tera, only a few more than a hundred — disposed among 11 genera of the family 

 Ephemeridae — had been named in 1853. No one person, unless it be Pictet, had 

 concentrated any great effort on the group. This is attested by the fact that 

 about twenty-five writers had described species of mayflies, but of these, only 

 Linnaeus, Say, Burmeister, Pictet, and Walker had described more than five 

 species. The trend for nearly two decades remained one of merely describing 

 new species, these new descriptions being primarily furnished by the neurop- 

 terists of the period. Genera were poorl}^ delimited and unnatural, and only 

 the European fauna had been investigated in any detail. 



The Reverend Alfred E. Eaton must certainly be considered the father of 

 the modern classification of the Ephemeroptera. After writing a number of 

 small papers, he published in 1871 A Monograph on the Ephemeridae, which 

 was succeeded a few years later by his monumental A Revisional Monograph 

 of the Recent Ephemeridae or Mayflies. It was in this later publication that 

 Eaton's genius for classification was brought to fruition. His division of the 

 Ephemeridae into groups, series, and sections formed the basis of the modern 

 classification. Eaton's concept of the genus was remarkably modern and he con- 

 sistently designated genotypes throughout the order. 



At the turn of the century, just before Eaton's attention was directed away 

 from the mayflies. Dr. J. G. Needham, of Cornell University, started studying 

 the American mayflies. In a series of papers that culminated in 1935 in the 

 publication (with Traver, Hsu, et al.) of the book, The Biology of Mayflies, Dr. 

 Needham and his students contributed immensely to all phases of mayfly study. 

 At about the same time the eminent mayfl}^ specialist, Dr. Georg Ulmer of Ham- 

 burg, Germany, started his study of the Ephemeroptera and subsequently pub- 

 lished numerous papers on the world fauna. The publication of his Uhersicht 

 iiher die Gattungen der Ephemeropteren, nehst Bemerkungen ilher einzelne 

 Arten was one of the true milestones in the literature of this order. 



The French entomologist, J. A. Lestage, contributed about one hundred 

 papers on mayflies. He had a keen interest in mayfly phylogeny and his en- 

 deavor knew no geographic boundaries. He is best known for his extensive work 

 on the nymphs of Palearctic mayflies. 



