In the photo to the left you can see that a key feature to differentiating male and females of this species is with the antennae. Females have slender antennae while the males have plumose antennae that look hairy.
I photographed both the adults, but only collected the female myself. The male photographed here was collected by the CUIC collection manager, Jason Dombroskie. Neuropterans are holometabolous insects (meaning they go through complete metamorphosis), so they're immatures look very different than the adults do. The N. americanus larvae pictured here was photographed by Matt Bertone (2017). |
N. americanus in IthacaDilarids are not commonly collected. In the Cornell University Insect Collection, which has over 7 million insect specimens, there are only 14 specimens from this family (pictured below), only four of which are N. americanus. Although they aren't encountered frequently one was collected this past summer (2017) along the Cascadilla Gorge Trail near Thurston Hall, here in Ithaca! |