What is an Indicator Species?

Question

Help for homework...

Answer 1

indicator species
n.
1. A species whose presence, absence, or relative well-being in a given environment is indicative of the health of its ecosystem as a whole.
2. A species used to locate another, less visible species.

Answer 2

Here are three common examples.
1. The oxygen availability often controls which species of animals and plants can live in a particular stretch of water we can use in the presence or absence of particular species to tell us how much pollution there is in a particular sample. These species are called "indicator species". For example, the Stonefly nymph is only found in water which does not have any sewage pollution.
2. Lichens are very sensitive to sulphur dioxide which pollutes air. In areas of high pollution only one or two species survive, but in clean air there are many species.
3. Coliform bacteria, e.g. Escherichia coli, are common gut bacteria and the numbers of these microbes present in a water sample indicate the degree of sewage pollution.

Answer 3

Good question, Short cutting on the homework.

It is a species typical of a particular habitat (habitat defined by categorising habitats, bigger than niches, into different groups).

Ideally, the species would be one which is only found in the particularly habitat or no other, but is often used for one that is more prevalent in the particular habitat.

e.g. Horseshoe Vetch, Hippocrepis comosa is a indicator species of chalkhill habitats in England because it is only found on chalk, and only found in any quantity on land that has not been fertilised or improved for agriculture, not on cattle pastures (too fertile). It is characteritic of neglected chalk low fertility land which may have been used for sheep pasture intermittently in the past, but it is not really suited to pasture and is only found in great quantity on low fertility wasteland where little grass can grow.

Answer 4

The first answer you got seems about right. There is a genus of birds called Indicator (the honey-guides) so an Indicator species could be a member of this genus!

Answer 5

An animal or plant whose presence would indicate some environmental condition. For example True worms. Several types of small worm live in mud at the bottom of ponds and streams, feeding on detritus (dead plant and animal material). Bright red Tubifex worms are an indicator of polluted water.

Answer 6

a good example is how species that rely on colder water ect are moving more northerly as the earth warms, but indicator species are just what they say, they are sensitive to enviromental changes and so the number and variety is taken as a gauge of enviromental quality or change

Answer 7

a species that is very sensitive to small changes in the level of pollution. its abscence can be used to predict the prescence of pollutants.

Answer 8

you got me there!