Don't know if this is of any interest to anyone here;

Short Life of British Mayfly Halved by Climate Change

Here's something for hook size:

"the adult mayflies have gotten noticeably smaller: Females are now on average eight to ten millimeters smaller than they were before 2008, Everall reported."

That's a massive reduction.

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Using a looper and a top makes for a much better furled leader!

Wow! thats quite a reduction in such a short time Steve, sounds like maybe its some kind of evolvement or adaption to match the warming climate.

asked you before mark to tie em in #20

Joking apart that is a big reduction in size , it realy is .


Cheers
Spencer

Yet the Dove is a limestone river, the deep springs supposedly containing water that is many years old and always warmed by being closer to the earth's core: warm in winter but cooler than ambient summer temperatures.

Seems a short study and why did the effect not begin until 'after 2007?

"This switch to a one-year life cycle “started after 2007 and was almost complete by 2011,” said Nick Everall of Aquascience, the environmental services contractor that carried out the study"

No mention is made of male v female ages yet an important feature of previous studies in this field. They have always varied in age.
I feel in this case the results may have been massaged and seized upon to further prove 'climate change' by the pro camp.
Certainly it has Prof Steve Ormerod's fingerprints all over it and much of his other work - such as when applied to the Welsh Wye - has been demonstrably shown to be exagerated.

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Save the softmouth trout

Mayflies on size 20 thats plain silly Spencer, size 24 is much more realistic

Do me half a dozen mark

Let me Know how much (paypal gift)


S

Thanks for an interesting post WM.

It's a happy coincidence that after thousands of years of evolution the Dove mayfly began to shrink by an amazing amount just one year after this study began – fancy that. If their first year's sampling was the only data the study had to compare their subsequent records to then they're making a fairly major assumption.

I wonder how much attention was paid to other environmental factors, particularly water quality and increases in levels of sedimentation for example. It would be interesting to know whether the Dove has a history of supporting a mayfly population which is smaller than the norm.

As FM says the rush to attribute every contemporary natural phenomenon to global warming is pretty shallow and both this study and Ormerod’s seem to be targeting the reliable funding stream that climate change awareness has created but to be fair the National Geographic's pretty sketchy on the detail of this study, it would be good to see a more detailed report.

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Musha rig um du rum da

Nice one pleased it was of some interest, although the environment agency must surely have kick sampling records going back quite far but not sure if they take measurements of the mayflies.