#indicator species

[havingawhaleovatime]

Sea Ice Misfortune Relocating Beluga Cetacean 4m Arctic - by Tony A. Dunn

[earthtolezelle]

• World Frog Day •

✨🍃🪷🐸🪷🍃✨

[neat-deadandlive-things]

Check out the massive (by northern standards) CaddisFly I found in a kicknet today!

This specimen is a larval stage. They build themselves cases out of different material depending on the genus.

It was surprising to see a caddisfly in a gross urban stream because they are usually indicators of clean water. We pulled out 6 garbage bags of trash from this site so it wasn't clean by any standards.

[spreadcasts]

Snails!

Spotted in our open compost pile, under our compost tumbler, and inside plant tissue damaged by vine borers.

[supersciencegeek]

Seeing a blue heron in the wild is like seeing God.

[alithographica]

See also: Canaries in coal mines.

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Transcript below the break.

Sentinel Species

Sentinel species, also called indicator species, are species that can quickly reveal environmental conditions and changes.

Frogs

Sentinel of general environmental health. Frogs are amphibious and have thin skin, making them susceptible to pollutants in the air, soil, or water. A healthy native frog population is often an indicator of a healthy environment.

Mussels

Sentinel of local water quality. Mussels eat by filter feeding. This process also cleans the water – to a point. If there are just too many pollutants for the mussels to handle, or if the waterway is full of invasive mussels, the native mussels will eventually die. The presence of native mussels often correlates to clean (though not necessarily drinkable) water and healthy ecosystems.

Lichen

Sentinel of air quality. Lichens obtain their nutrients from the substrate they grow on as well as the air. Though some lichen species are tolerant of air pollution, others are very sensitive and are only present in areas with clean air.

A specific tale...

Cats were an unexpected sentinel of mercury and heavy metals in Minamata, Japan in the 1950s. For several years, cats in the town would slowly develop convulsions and lose motor control. In 1956, humans began experiencing the same symptoms. Investigators discovered the cause a few years later: a local plastic manufacturer was polluting the bay, resulting in toxins being absorbed by the fish and shellfish that the villagers (and cats) ate.

[rayilluminations]

Atelopus varius with  Spirodela polyrrhiza and Wolffia globosa

2017

[singulardreamscapes]

Black Oystercatcher  - Haematopus bachmani - Oregon Coast

I love these awesome little birds. They stick to rocky coastal shorelines where they feed in the intertidal zone and are a keystone indicator species along the north Pacific shoreline.

Photography by Haley Willner