Comments on: Water Boatman

By: Jamie

Jamie — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 00:42:08 +0000

As a kid (41 years ago), I found one of these swimming in our pool. I took it out of the water and it flew away. It’s something that I have thought about many times over the years. It didn’t seem possible that it survived the chlorine, but especially that a swimming insect could fly. Thanks for setting me straight.

By: beth

beth — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 09:59:03 +0000

they look cute

By: Jessica Powell

Jessica Powell — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 11:59:50 +0000

There ugly !!!!!

By: grogon

grogon — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 03:45:02 +0000

do they eat water snails?

By: maggie

maggie — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 23:35:45 +0000

i just caught to water bugs while swimming i think they are very cool how do they mate though because my dad said that they dont

By: Graha013

Graha013 — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 16:41:41 +0000

Acilius mediatus. Not a water boatman at all.. predacious diving beetle.

By: Graha013

Graha013 — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 16:19:56 +0000

Thanks for that. Ironically, the body shape is much more rounded than most of those specimens, and he is a deeper brown with some gold/lighter markings only at the tail end that makes a sort of half circle design. Small head, small eyes…he doesn’t really match at all. I’ll upload there and try to get some better pictures of him and see if I can identify…and cross fingers it’s not the Hidden Vampiric Waterboatmen or something like that

By: Tim Eisele

Tim Eisele — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 16:12:53 +0000

Actually, your best bet to ID it would be to go to the Water Boatman pages at BugGuide:

http://bugguide.net/node/view/4964/bgimage

If you don’t find a match yourself, you can easily go to the upper-right corner and register yourself at BugGuide (it’s free) and upload your pictures to that page. A number of people who are far more expert than I am will then probably be able to tell you what you have.

By: Graha013

Graha013 — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 16:05:26 +0000

Is there a contact form for you? I’d like to send you a couple of pics, see if you can’t definitely ID it (boatman or not, I haven’t seen a pic matching his markings)

By: Tim Eisele

Tim Eisele — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 15:46:35 +0000

I’m not sure how long they live either, it sounds like you might be in a position to tell us after a bit. It sounds like it overwintered as an adult. Insects that do that usually mate and lay eggs sometime in the spring or early summer, and then die, although how long that takes can vary quite a bit.

If you could get a couple more, have them mate, and establish a population, that would be quite amusing!