Indicator species 

Indicator species are those species that have a low tolerance for adverse environmental conditions such as low levels of dissolved oxygen or fluctuation in pH and would be absent in a unhealthy ecosystem. 

See the indicator species data by clicking the Indicator species link.

    Some indicator species we found in our pond though out the year are mayflies, stoneflies, and Caddisflies. We haven't found a lot of stoneflies and caddisflies in our pond for the last few years; we have captured 15 caddisflies and ten stoneflies in the past four years. Unfortunately, we didn't find any caddisflies this year; we only found one stonefly. Because we only had a little data on stone and caddisflies, we will focus on mayflies.

As we can see from the chart, the number of mayflies has been decreasing since 2019, indicating that something happened to the pond, making it unsuitable for mayflies to live. This is very interesting because if you look at the data, the only thing that worsened from 2019 is the Phosphate number. Everything else is moving toward the positive side. We even had a nitrate number of 5 in 2019, and the dissolved oxygen was only 5.3. So everything except for phosphate has become a lot better for mayflies, but the number decreased though out the few years. Accordingly, the number of phosphates went up when the mayflies' number went down. So we predict that mayflies don't live phosphate. They would only be found where the water doesn't have much phosphate. The low numbering for indicator species indicate that our pond is not as healthy it was few years ago.