Caddis anatomy

[uffepuffe 0]

I am thinking about tying a super realistic flying caddis and have been researching alot for referens photos lately. It seems impossible to find a photo of a caddis in flight. The biggest question that rises is how the positioning of it's legs when flying. I have been watching butterflies and dragonflies these past days to see how they hold their legs and it seems like they both hold their legs backwards / downwards. The thing that I thought about was the fact that the caddis has a much shorter front pair of legs, which got me to wonder if it perhaps holds those upwards / forward instead. The butterllies seems to hold it's legs in an angle from it's body while the dragonfly looks like it holds it's legs very close along it's body. I would guess that the caddis is more like the dragonfly in that aspect.

 

Any ideas on this? Or even better, does anyone have a photo of a flying caddis that they could share with me?

 

Ulf

[Taxon 0]

Ulf-

 

I have absolutely no idea. However, now that you've posed the question, I'll keep my eyes open for a picture of a caddisfly in flight.

[uffepuffe 0]

Thanks alot Roger, it seems like it's no easy task to take a photo of it while in flight. Here is the only photo I have found:

 

http://www.woodselec.com/caddisfly.htm

 

Pretty cool photo, just my luck none of the legs show

 

 

A friend of mine suggested me to catch a caddis and put it in a large glas jar or aquarium and try to video it and play it back in slow motion. Don't have to be super quality, just enough so that I can make out the position of the legs. I'll keep you all posted on how it goes.

 

Ulf

[Joe Hard 0]

I remember seeing somewhere that they were testing bees in flight. They had the bees comming to sugar water. They then put the sugar water inside a small wind tunnel and filmed the bees flying. Thinking that a plane folds up its wings and becomes more areodynamic. They found as they increased the speed in the wind tunnel the more the bees legs hung down. They couldnt figure it out. I figure the bees use energy to hold there legs tucked in, when the wind is increased the energy is used more in the wings and less in the legs. I know this is not about a flying caddis, but they might do the same. Sounds like you have a real cool experiment going on, looking forward to your findings and tie.

[uffepuffe 0]

That really cool information Joe! One would think that a flying insect would concentrate all it's energy to the movement of it's wings when flying but it sounds like that's not always the case! Only when it's really windy.

 

I've caught som caddis and tried to video them with my digital cam, but the quality is to poor to be able to make out anything, will try to borrow a proper digital video cam and try again to see if I can figure it out.