Crane Fly

In general appearance, they are large craneflies with grayish-brown bodies. Male craneflies may have a wingspan from 1¼ to 1½ inches. Females are larger, with a wingspan of 1½ to 2 inches.

The wings are slightly cloudy, with a darker area and a white stripe along the leading edge against dark and light backgrounds. Other than the leading edge stripes, there are no pigmented areas on the veins or cross-veins and no other spots or pictures in the wings.

A very clear character for distinguishing the two species apart is the separation of the compound eyes on the ventral surface i.e underside of the head. This character can be used to distinguish both males and females of the two species. The space between the eyes of T. oleracea is narrow, only as wide as the width of the base segments of the antenna. The eye separation on T. paludosa is much wider, usually several times the width of the antenna.

A different character to separate the species, which only applies to females, is the length of the wings. Female T. oleracea wings are clearly longer than the abdomen. The wings of female T. paludosa are shorter than the abdomen.

Crane fly adults only live for a couple of days and do not usually feed. Their larval stages are usually aquatic. These flies easily loose their long spindly legs if handled. Because of their size, you can study the "halteres" organs. Halteres function as balancing gyroscopes and are located just behind the first set of wings on the thorax. This large crane fly is sometimes mistaken for a giant mosquito due to conspicuous mouthparts. In England, they carry the common name of "daddy-long_legs", not to be confused with Phalangida group of arachnids which also carry this common name. The French call these insects "cousins".