iSee Pond Life

iSee Pond Life is a program to identify common UK freshwater pond creatures including invertebrates, fish and amphibians and is suitable for children or non experts. It contains 39 common UK species from very familiar ones like the Mosquito larva to less familiar ones like the Pea Mussel.

There are very few species of fish or amphibians found in freshwater ponds and selecting either of these presents thumbnails with the appropriate images at the top. Press a thumbnail to see the species picture with brief descriptive text beneath.

The invertebrates included are those which live mainly on or in the water, insects, spiders, snails or crustaceans. In most cases the insects included are the larva rather than the adults which do not live in water.

To identify an invertebrate, answer 4 questions about number of legs, wings, main colour and size. If you are uncertain a question can be left as "Don't Know" and the program will make a judgement based on the questions you have answered.

When you press identify all the species pictures are presented as thumbnails in the most likely order with exact matches first, then partial matches, then those that do not match any answer. A box marks the end of the exact matches if any. Press a thumbnail to see the species picture with brief text beneath.

You can leave all questions as "Don't know" to view all species thumbnails in alphabetical order or you can use the separate species browser which has larger thumbnails and names beside them.

The application uses high quality original paintings by an established wildlife artist. Species images are 320x320 pixels to give acceptable quality on all phone screen sizes/resolutions and views operate in portrait or landscape mode.

Questions for invertebrates are weighted in order of reliability. The legs question, which identifies the generic group, has the highest weighting which means, for example, that the species with the right number of legs but wrong colour come before those with the wrong number of legs but right colour. Other rules provide for easier identification, for example, the undeveloped wings of the Stonefly larva are so difficult to see that we also allow "No wings" as the answer although it is technically incorrect. In a few cases more than one answer can be correct, for example, the Leech can be in either of two size ranges depending on maturity.