First things first, what's an insect? Well in the grand scheme of living things man breaks down everything into categories. Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species; remember any of this yet? In the animal Kingdom under the Phylum Arthropoda there is a Class called Insecta. In order to be in this Class you must have:

• 3 body parts (head, thorax, & abdomen)
  
• 3 pairs of jointed legs not necessarily (midge larvae)
  
• some times 1 or 2 pairs of wings
  
• 1 pair of antennae
  
• and absolutely no jointed legs on your abdomen
  

Ok, now we know what an insect is. From here on out it will start to get difficult. Identifying insects gets complicated because they change. Not just a little change but great big ones. Aquatic insects go from being water breathing bottom crawlers to air breathing flies. Kind of like a butterfly but the caterpillar lives under water. Some Coleoptera go from terrestrial juveniles to aquatic adults. This is called Metamorphosis, which means change. In aquatic insects there are two kinds of metamorphosis, complete metamorphosis and incomplete metamorphosis.

Insects that have complete metamorphosis go through four different stages. Those stages are egg, larva, pupa, and adult. The aquatic insects that go through complete metamorphosis are:

Common Name Caddisflies Midges Dobsonflies Alderflies Aquatic Moths Aquatic Beetles

Order Trichoptera Diptera Megaloptera Megaloptera Lepidoptera Coleoptera

Insects that have incomplete metamorphosis go through three different stages. Those stages are egg, nymph, and adult. The aquatic insects that go through incomplete metamorphosis are:

Common Name Stoneflies Mayflies Dragonflies Damselflies

Order Plecoptera Ephemeroptera Odonata Odonata

Now that we have covered insects and metamorphosis we can move on with a detailed descriptions of each stage of metamorphosis in life stages of insects.

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