Ngahere Neighbourhood: piriwai (spiny gilled mayfly): The Brook Waimārama Sanctuary

🪶 Ngahere Neighbourhood: piriwai (spiny gilled mayfly)
Tiny, ancient, and found only in Aotearoa — the spiny gilled mayfly (Coloburiscus humeralis) spends up to four years underwater before living just a few days as an adult.
Piriwai can only survive in clean, fast-flowing streams. Its larvae cling to river rocks, filtering food from the water with tiny hair-like gills. They are an important sign of healthy freshwater ecosystems, so much so that this species gets a rating of 8-9 on the sensitivity/stream health rating. All native stream macroinvertebrates are ranked in terms of their sensitivity and used as a bioindicator of stream health.
The Sanctuary stream is a reference site for stream health and represents a ‘pure’, unadulterated site and thus is highly diverse in sensitive stream invertebrates.
📸 Photo: Taken by Henry Hart here at the Sanctuary

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