Attaneuria ruralis

Attaneuria ruralis (Hagen)

records in Pennsylvania are based on collections from 14 locations in 9 counties (Masteller 1996); however, most of these records are of adults collected prior to 1948 or nymphs collected and identified as part of stream bioassessments. Questions on the identification of A. ruralis nymphs by Pennsylvania aquatic biologists prompted me to examine nymph specimens of record at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia and the Frost Entomology Museum of Pennsylvania State University, and additional material from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, Harrisburg, PA, and United States Environmental Protection Agency, Wheeling, WV. Nymphs were also compared with A. ruralis nymphs from Iowa. All nymphs identified as A. ruralis in these collections and recorded in Masteller (1996) were determined to be Paragnetina media (Walker), a common stonefly found in small to large warm water creeks in Pennsylvania, except for one nymph from Pine Creek, Blackwell, Tioga County, which was an Acroneuria. Additionally, one adult from Fayette County in the Frost Museum collections identified as A. ruralis was an Acroneuria. The only valid Pennsylvania records for A. ruralis, therefore, appear to be the pre-1946 adult specimens from Cumberland, Dauphin, and Lebanon Counties noted in Surdick and Kim (1976), which were confirmed by Stark in his review of the Perlidae genera (Stark and Gaufin 1976b) or cited in Needham and Claassen (1925). All but one of these records is from the Harrisburg area, likely from the Susquehanna River; the lone additional specimen is from an unspecified location in Lebanon County. Casual collections of adult stoneflies in the Harrisburg area during the past 20 years have not yielded any additional specimens of A. ruralis. Also, I have not been able to confirm the collection of any A. ruralis nymphs from Pennsylvania. Targeted collection efforts should be conducted in proper habitats to determine if this species is still present in Pennsylvania. Heimdal et al. (2004) indicated that A. ruralis nymphs could be found on woody debris or boulders in the slower current of rivers in interior Iowa. Poulton and Stewart (1991) stated that A. ruralis nymphs could be collected in Ozark streams by pulling debris from the river bottom or disturbing rocks or riprap upstream from a net.