Water boatmen have a flatter body and are usually darker, with noticeable parallel crosslines on the back. something new about backswimmers, they can bite! Does everyone else know that backswimmers can bite and I somehow missed this bit of information?
The short Adult backswimmers bear functional wings and will fly, though doing so requires them to first exit the water and right themselves. As mentioned above, people often confuse backswimmers with water boatmen, so it’s probably no surprise that they look fairly similar. Kirk Mona is the founder of Twin Cities Naturalist. Nymphs look similar to adults, though they lack fully developed wings. There are actually four species of backswimmer (family Notonectidae, also known as 'Greater Water Boatmen') in the UK. They are in the family Notonectidae. I learned many valuable things that summer but one of the first was a staple of the naturalist trade; Dip netting.
I learned what backswimmers are the very first time I went dip netting. There are many variations but in the 17 summers, springs and falls I've done dip netting there's always been backswimmers. But beware if you handle them - their bite can be quite painful. Backswimmers feed by piercing their prey and then sucking the fluids from their immobilized bodies.As all true bugs do, backswimmers undergo incomplete or simple metamorphosis. If 15,000 kids over 17 years managed to not get bitten though you must need to really tick them off to get bitten. Use the following tricks to get them disappeared from the pool: Take a group of kids down to a lake or pond, scoop around with nets from the shore or dock and empty the contents into kitchen tubs, cool whip containers or whatever you can find. There’s a reason to avoid this bug: the bite feels a lot like a bee sting. Backswimmers are easy to confuse with boatmen, but only backswimmers bite.
I took my first job as a naturalist about 17 years ago. Backswimmers do just that; they swim upside down, on their backs. I used my hand to try the scoop up the little innocent looking backswimmer or maybe just make a little pool in my palm so it could swim around and people could get a good look.
So, there you go. About 400 species are known throughout the world, but only 34 species inhabit North America. They've also been known to bite unsuspecting swimmers, a habit for which they've earned the nickname water wasps. So far my insides have not liquified. Quite simply, they bite. in: The backswimmer injects digestive enzymes and other chemicals into the animal which paralyze it and begin to dissolve the insides into goo.
They are all predators and typically range from 0.5 to 1.5 cm (0.2–0.6 in) in length.
I was doing a dip netting program this weekend and wanted to show the public a little backswimmer scurrying around inside a kitchen tub placed on the dock. They grasp prey and cling to aquatic vegetation using their first and second pairs of legs. How did no backswimmer ever bite one of those 15,000 school kids? They hunt by either diving down to catch submerged prey or by releasing their hold on vegetation and simply drifting up under prey above them. The backswimmer's dorsal side is convex and V-shaped, like the keel of a boat. Yup, sounds right. Backswimmers have a very nasty bite. The reason the bite hurts so much has to do with the hunting technique of the backswimmer. These aquatic insects use their long back legs as oars to propel themselves across the water. At maturity, most backswimmers measure less than ½ inch in length.Backswimmers prey on other aquatic insects, including fellow backswimmers, as well as on tadpoles or small fish. This makes them less conspicuous to predators as they backstroke around the pond.The backswimmer's head is typical of an aquatic true bug. When oxygen stores become low, it must breach the surface of the water to replenish the supply.Males of some species possess stridulatory organs, which they use to sing Backswimmers inhabit ponds, freshwater pools, lake edges, and slow-moving streams.
I've seen more than a few backswimmers in my life. Content is strictly copyrighted by Kirk Mona and may not be reproduced without permission. That works out to somewhere around 15,300 students. I conservatively estimate I've done somewhere around 510 dip netting programs in the last 17 years.